John of Daunt

RNER

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CAL [FORMA

LOS ANGELES

JOHN OF DAUNT

OTHER BOOKS BY THE
SAME AUTHOR

SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS

THE FAMILY AT MISRULE

THE LITTLE LARRIKIN

MISS BOBBIE

THE CAMP AT WANDINONG

THREE LITTLE MAIDS

THE STORY OF A BABY

LITTLE MOTHER MEG

BETTY AND CO.

MOTHER'S LITTLE GIRL

THE WHITE ROOF-TREE

IN THE MIST OF THE MOUNTAINS

THE STOLEN VOYAGE

FUGITIVES FROM FORTUNE

THE RAFT IN THE BUSH

AN OGRE UP-TO-DATE

THAT GIRL

THE CUB

THE SECRET OF THE SEA

FAIR INES

THE APPLE OF HAPPINESS

THE FLOWER O1 THE PINE

PORTS AND HAPPY HAVENS

' Wrong d-d-d-dog,' he stuttered in explanation, and looked to where
an innocent, if savage, brown retriever was glaring at him from
a safe distance." (Chapter X.)

John of Daunt]

\Fronlispicte

JOHN *
OF DAUNT

BY

ETHEL TURNER 6f

(MRS. H. R. CURLEWIS)

Author oj "Seven Little Australians," etc., etc.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED

LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
1916

ft?

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — THE DESCENT . . . . 7

II. — CONSIDERING A FATHER l8

III. — THE HOUSE . ... .23

IV. — GETTING DRESSED .... 32

V. — GERTRUD 45

VI. — BACON AND NEWS OF THE DAY . 63

VII. — NUMBER SEVEN, TRAFALGAR TERRACE 73

VIII. — OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND . . 83

IX. — " A PENNYWORTH OF POISON, PLEASE " Q7

X. — THE DARK DOING . . . *' 108

XI. — SURGERY Il6

XII. — THEOLOGICAL I3O

xiii. — BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT . 144

XIV. — HIGH HARMONY .... 157

xv. — CHILDREN'S QUARTERS . . . 168

1381177

6 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

XVI. — BIG JOHN 179

XVII. — A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE . . . IQ2

XVIII. — GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE . 2C)6

XIX. — MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS, AND A LITTLE

ABOUT WILLIAM . . . . 2l8

XX. — MORE ABOUT WILLIAM . . .231

XXI. — CON AND CON'S SISTER . . . 240

XXII. — HOW SHORT ALL A DAY IS . . 248

JOHN OF DAUNT

CHAPTER I .

THE DESCENT.

"Oh, 'tis a parlous boy
Bold, quick, ingenious, forward, capable."

—Richard III.

"P\AISY, now down on all-fours while she
rubbed linoleum cream into the hall
floor, now sitting on her heels for respite
and to replenish the moisture on her cloth,
caught a glimpse of pink high above her
head. It was very familiar pink, but the
glimpse being taken in through her eye-
corners only, hardly reached her brain. She
tried with an arm sweep to remove the marks
of feet just beneath the telephone, but the
cloth was dry again and there is no time before
breakfast to be prodigal with elbow-grease
alone. She sat up and reached for the tin
of cream once more.

7

8 JOHN OF DAUNT.

And now she saw nothing in the world but
pink. Pink coming down, down, down from
the dizzy heights above her, slowly at first,
but gaining in speed at every moment, pink
turning a curve, coming down a straight
slant, pink faster and still more furiously
fast until, just as she clutched her heart in
terror and made ready to scream piercingly,
it was sitting on a heap of mats and rugs she
had flung down after shaking them.

" You wicked boy you," she gasped.

The small figure in the pink pyjamas
laughed, but he was more than a little pale
himself now and continued to sit still while
he recovered his breath and his intrepidity.

" Knew I could," he remarked at last.

" Gertrud ! " called Daisy, still too fluttered
to get up on her feet, and yet impelled to
share the shock even though with no one
better than her fellow-servant, and a
German at that.

The girl, Gertrud, came into sight from the
still further flight of stairs that led to the
basement where she was engaged in preparing
breakfast. She came with a ponderous step,

THE DESCENT. 9

but she came, for Daisy's tone of voice was
not to be denied.

" Right from the top — down the banisters,"
said Daisy, pointing graphically up the two
flights and using a circling motion with her
hand that left no doubt of what she wanted
to convey even in the slow mind of Gertrud.

" Himmel ! " said Gertrud phlegmatically,
" It is in the making of boys. He has the
sort of things done before this on many times
and not be killed."

" My word, Gert, you ought to have seen
me," said the boy, instantly so encouraged
he leaped up, recovered. " My word, it is
a rush ; just like greased lightning at the end."

' By the providence of the saints I'd left
the rugs in that heap," said Daisy, " or he'd
have been lying there now dashed to pieces."

"Well you are a giddy goat," said the
young man. " You don't think I'd have
done it, do you, if the rugs hadn't been there ?
I was just coming down the plain way when
I noticed the heap and thought it was a good
chance to try. I've never done more than
the last bit before."

io JOHN OF DAUNT.

" And I'll take care you don't again," said
Daisy, " second the doctor gets down I up
and tells him. Hope he gives you what for.
It's what you want, bad, and it's what you
don't get, and if your Pa wants to save your
life before you kill yourself he'd better begin
at once."

Ian gnawed his knuckle a moment.

" Let him have his brekker first, Dais," he
said, a suing note in his voice.

" Not I," said Daisy. " Only I'm late, I'd
go up and tell before he starts to shave."

" Go on, Dais, there's a duck. He hardly
ever gets time to eat all his chop before the
telephone or door bell goes." The boy was
plainly anxious.

" You should think of things like that
before you do things," said Daisy inexorably.
" I shouldn't be doing my duty as a woman
not to tell the first second I see him. Why,
if I didn't, who's to say you wouldn't be at
the same thing again in an hour ? "

" Oh, go and take a running jump," said
the boy, suddenly sick of the subject.

" And I tells your Ma that, so there,"

THE DESCENT. n

said Daisy with asperity. " I heard her telling
you only yesterday how rude it was. She'll
make you say, ' I beg your pardon,
Daisy/ "

" I beg your pardon, Daisy," said Ian,
" I oughtn't to have said it, 'cause you're so
fat you couldn't if you tried."

Gertrud smiled broadly and turned to
descend to the consideration of porridge and
eggs once more.

' This," said Daisy, " comes of decent
Australians letting their children be brought
up in a house with a Hun. It's not you, I
blame, my boy, for your manners ; it's them
as has had the minding of you."

Ian blinked sweetly at this sudden diversion
of wrath from his own head : Gertrud' s
shoulders were broad, he recollected, besides
she really was a Hun, though mother said no,
she was only a poor German.

" Tell you, Dais," he said in his heartiest
and most affectionate manner, "I'll do the
rest of your floor for you if you won't split
about the banisters."

Daisy was stout ; there was no doubt about

12 JOHN OF DAUNT.

the matter, and rubbing floors was the work
she most disliked in the world.

' Under the cabinet and the hall-stand,
and a real good polish ? " she bargained.

" You said yourself I could beat you at it,"
said Ian, seeking to clinch the matter by
taking the polishing cloth from her.

But Daisy decided not to be vanquished
this time too easily. She held on to the cloth.

" And the surround in the c'sulting room,"
she said firmly.

" Oh, I say, that's coming it too strong,"
grumbled Ian. " Last time it was only this
floor."

" Coming down two flights is a lot worse
than going out on the milk-cart in your
pyjamas. Now what's it to be ? Is your
Pa to have his breakfast in peace or have
I got to tell ? "

" He's not my Pa," said Ian irritably, " he's
my father. I'm always telling you, Daisy."

" Last place I was in they always called
their father Pa," said Daisy, " and real little
ladies and gentlemen they was. I think
father and dad sounds real common; But

THE DESCENT. 13

I can't waste no more time. Is it yes
or no ? "

" Oh, give's hold," groaned Ian, and seized
the cloth.

Daisy rose to her feet, picked up the tin,
a big cloth and a little cloth, and handed them
to him. She looked at him where he stood,
pink-trousered legs apart, surveying the task
before him with deep disgust ; real affection
came into her eyes.

If ever she married — which was the divine
but far-off event to which her whole nature
moved — and had a little son, she hoped he
would be just like this adorable, chubby eight-
year-old, with his dark, close-cropped, little
bullet head, and his dark, soft, impish,
angel eyes.

" Give us a kiss," she said yearningly.

He kissed her absent-mindedly ; he was
abstrusely calculating the length of time his
job would take.

" Littlejohn ! " she murmured, holding him
to her.

He struggled energetically out of her
embrace.

14 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" lan's my name, Daisy," he said.

" Your Ma says Littlejohn sometimes,"
said Daisy.

Ian sighed.

How could one convey it to a person like
Daisy that that was just the reason the name
was not for every one's use ?

" lan's my name," he repeated irritably.

Daisy sighed.

How could one convey it to a person like
Ian that a woman with no little boy of her
own simply must use a more affectionate
diminutive to an eight-year-old than " Ian,"
stern Scotch variant of John ?

" Well you needn't go under the bookcases
and desk much in the c'sulting room, darling,"
she said, melting with the kiss, " your Pa
never notices."

" Father," said Ian, still irritated.

" Father," said Daisy, accepting the correc-
tion graciously.

Then she went down to the basement to
enjoy the early cup of cocoa and the hot
buttered toast that would be ready there to
stay her until breakfast time ; Hun or not,

THE DESCENT. 15

Gertrud at least had the knack of making
things extremely comfortable in the kitchen.

The little pink figure polished vigorously
and faithfully at the floor for ten minutes at
least. Then a happy respite came.

The telephone bell rang.

Daisy's voice, a little thick with cocoa, came
up the stairs.

" See who that is, ducky."

" Hullo," said Ian, who already had the
receiver in his hand.

" Have I got to come ? " groaned Daisy.

" No, it's only Bill," said Ian with a look
of infinite content.

Daisy went back to her toast and cocoa,
equally content.

" Hello," said Bill. Bill, christened Conrad
Middleton, but always known to his best
friend as Bill ; Bill, also eight, but not sturdy,
not impish-eyed ; Bill, with a lion's heart in
a sickly little body. Bill, who lived in the
bottom house of this tall suburban terrace,
while his chum Ian — or Jo to him — lived in
the top one.

" Hullo," returned Ian reassuringly

16 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" I say, Jo, what are you going to wear
to-day ? " said Bill.

Ian pondered the matter a moment, standing
on one leg.

" Grey suit," he said at last.

" Grey stockings ? " asked Con.

' Y-yes," said Ian, rapidly deciding against
navy, to which his thoughts had first inclined.

" With the red tops or the white ? "
pursued Con anxiously.

" Red," said Ian with much decision.

" And what tie ? "

" Allies'," said Ian.

" Would Belgian do ? " said Con, " my
Allies' is spoiled. One of the kids went and
took it for a doll's sash."

" No. Get it back from her. It's got to
be Allies. D'ye hear, Bill. Oh, dash ! "

" Hullo, hullo, are you there, Jo. What's
that noise ? Don't ring off."

lan's voice went along the line, shaken
with sudden laughter.

" I fell down just then, that's all," he said.
" I've made the floor too jolly slippery.
I always do it better than she does."

THE DESCENT. 17

" Hullo, hullo. What d'ye mean, Jo ? "

' Tell you when I see you, Bill. Mind you
come down after brekker ? "

" Got a rotten throat. They'll watch that
I don't."

" All right. I'll come up," said Ian. " Dry
up now, Bill, I've got another floor to rub."

" Eh, what ? "

" Dry up."

Ian rang off and hurried into the consulting-
room with his sticky cloths tucked under his
arm and his tin of cream held in his hands.

What a blessing it was his father never
looked under the desk and the bookcases,
it must be time he was going to his bath ;
yes, high in the air he could hear Dee's voice
shouting above the shower ; she always tried
to shout the shower down.

It was his turn next ; of course he bathed
himself now he had turned eight, but still
his mother had a way of coming in to see
if his ears were clean.

He must hurry.

B

CHAPTER II.

CONSIDERING A FATHER.

A S he polished, Ian considered his father,
perhaps more definitely than ever before.
There were a lot of things he liked deeply
about his father.

For instance, there was the way he banged
up his roll- top desk. The desk itself was
essentially that of a man and a father ; not
in the very least like the womanish affair in
the drawing-room where his mother wrote
her letters ; it was full of heavy secrets ;
doubtless it was full of diseases or cures for
diseases ; measles and bronchitis and differia,
taken away from patients and safely boxed-up,
were, doubtless, in many of the pigeon holes.
It was even quite possible that the bones of
dead men were stored in this desk. They
were harboured openly in a glass case behind

18

CONSIDERING A FATHER. 19

one of the cabinets ; and a head grinned
down at you fleshlessly from a shelf in the
corner cupboard that was not even kept
locked, so it was not difficult to conjecture
that pretty frightful things were concealed
in this roll-top desk that was invariably safely
banged down every time his father left the
house.

Conrad Middleton often hid his head under
the bedclothes in a nightsweat of deadly
fear at the thought of the things in this room,
and more especially at the conjectures — lan's
conjectures — about the things in this desk !
But Ian distinctly gloated over them. He
considered that they immensely added to his
prestige ; only one other boy that he knew had
the advantage over him in these matters,
and that was little Field, the butcher's son.

Ian liked the big, worn place on the carpet
near the desk ; it showed what great, heavy,
stamping feet his father had ; the carpet near
the drawing-room desk never became worn
like this. Another thing the boy liked deeply
about this room was its assorted smells.

Downstairs, still further downstairs than

20 JOHN OF DAUNT.

this floor, was one set of smells, — bacon frying,
cabbage cooking, coffee boiling over on the
gas stove and slightly burning, — an exquisite
smell, this last. And upstairs, still further
upstairs than that floor, was yet another set
of smells, — the freesias in the drawing-room
that sometimes kept quite still and sometimes
flung out a wave of sweetness ; the sandal-
wood box on a table, the pink sofa-cushion
in which the feathers had gone musty.

And in the big bedroom one's nose was often
kept pleasantly busy : the pale green soap
gave out delicious whiffs : Dee's violet powder
pleased — Dee was still such a " bit of a kid "
that she was still dusted over with powder
just as Gertrud dusted the apple dumplings ;
and on the dressing-table you could pull
out one silver-topped cork and sample the
smell marked 4711 Favorita, and another,
and see what La Rose Jacqueminot was like.

But in this consulting-room were stirring
and fatherly scents like iodoform, or carbolic
acid, and Ian used to sniff them with the
deepest appreciation.

He had his tongue out now as he worked ;

CONSIDERING A FATHER. 21

his little arm ached, but he was doing the
job faithfully. He put a high polish, after all,
on the stretches under the desk and under
the bookcases ; if his father did, by chance,
stoop down and look, well, he shouldn't
feel ashamed of the shine of hidden places.

Various aspects of his father, all of which
he liked, passed before him as he worked.

He liked the aspect of him driving the
motor-car in thick traffic and saving people's
lives by just not running over them when
it seemed an absolute certainty that they
were lost.

He liked the aspect of him coming in on
the crest of a breaker when they went surf
bathing ; punching the old leather ball on
the balcony ; holding Dee by her heels to
see if her eyes would drop out ; rushing
round to the garage in the back yard and
spilling petrol into the tank and getting the
car out and away in three minutes at the
hest of a panting, ragged boy at the door
who said his mother was dying ; going out at
night to the theatre, or a dance, with mother
—rare occasions these — clad in that smooth,

22 JOHN OF DAUNT

black suit of his, and that smooth, black
overcoat, and that fascinating hat that shut
up on springs.

But of all the aspects of his father there were
none the little boy so deeply liked as the one of
him out on the front balcony in his Turkish-
towelling dressing-gown, cleaning his boots.

He was so human and jolly then ; he
got so dirty — he even — not often, of course,
because when you have little boys you have
to remember you have little boys — he even
" said words " occasionally if the lid didn't
come off the blacking-tin easily, or if he put
on the big pair of canvas gloves back to front.

The little boy did the fourth side of the
monotonous green linoleum in violent haste.
The thought was not to be borne any longer
that he was missing all the getting-up fun
on the balcony. He ran to the top of the
basement steps and pitched the cloths and the
empty tin right down to the kitchen door.

" There's your silly old things, Daisy," he
shouted. Then he was rushing up the stairs
once more with all his might, even if not
quite so rapidly as he had rushed down.

CHAPTER III.

THE HOUSE.

HP HE house was like the narrow addition-
sum they give you when you pass
out of the kindergarten into the primary
class. There were two rooms on each story,
and there were four stories ; two and two
and two and two it rose from its foundation
to its roof.

In the basement was the kitchen, where
Daisy and Gertrud ably sustained the causes
of the Triple Entente and the Alliance and
drank cocoa in the peaceable intervals. Also
in the basement was the eating-room of the
family.

The architect had never intended this to
be so when he drew his plans ; he had put
the customary " drawing-room and dining-
room connected by folding doors " upon the

23

24 JOHN OF DAUNT.

next story, and in the drawing-room made
an alcove expressly for a grand piano, and a
bay window expressly for dusty palms, while
in the dining-room he had allowed a recess
capable of receiving a truly British sideboard
weighing about a ton.

But he had .never taken it into his considera-
tion that among his terrace tenants he might
have a doctor who would " live at his job/'

The " drawing-room and dining-room con-
nected by folding doors " in this particular
house had perforce to become waiting-room
and consulting-room ; the roll-top desk, with
the diseases and bones in it, occupied the side
that was to have been sacred to a grand piano,
and in the bay window, instead of an elongated
palm-stand, stood a revolving bookcase full
of such light literature as Mott's Archives
of Neurology or Cunningham's Textbook of
Anatomy.

Similarly, in the intended dining-room you
could see no one ever sat or dined, although
indeed a modest sideboard lurked in the great
recess, there being nowhere else in the home
to put it.

THE HOUSE. 25

The long table had its quota of guests
daily, to be sure, but they were an atrabilious
lot who fed morosely with one eye on the
back numbers of the magazines scattered
on the cloth, and kept the other one on
the door waiting for the maid's signal that
was to call them to the front room.

That is why the family dining-room was
downstairs, next to the kitchen.

It was papered in blues and whites, and
it really tried to put a good face on matters
and to be Dutch, and artistic, and so on. It
had nice bits of brass about, and it hung
heavy blue curtains, stencilled with tulips,
between itself and any contact with the
plebeian kitchen that lurked so close at
hand. But the light only came into it from
the yard, and was still further choked by a
wall of the garage, so any cheerfulness had
to be bought with a lighted gas even in the
morning hours.

The family ate in it and escaped from it
at the earliest possible moment.

Above the waiting-room was the drawing-
room, and a very good^drawing-room it was

26 JOHN OF DAUNT.

too ; a doctor with only a so-so practice
must have a good drawing-room. The carpet
was just as rich and expensive as was needful ;
the chairs just as frail and uncomfortable ;
here were the palms and aspidistras on their
unsteady, elongated stands, even though there
was no bay window in this room in which to
put them ; vases abounded, both of the silver
and china variety. The piano, lacking an
alcove, stood across a corner, its back to the
room, richly caparisoned in a Japanese kake-
mono, worked in pale blue and silver cord.
It was a very old-fashioned piano, bought
cheaply at a sale, but the casual caller, who
only saw the splendid blue and silver back
of it, never knew of the past-date fretwork
and silk of the front hidden from sight.

Regiments lurked here, undisturbed some-
times for days together ; the carvings of the
legs could absorb an entire body of Scotch
Highlanders ; a force of Zulus, spears in
hand, could occupy an impregnable position
in the brass candle-sconces, while two whole
boxes of kneeling fusiliers might be disposed
in the fretwork behind the music-holder.

THE HOUSE. 27

Care, however, had to be given to disposals
in this last position. At the left-hand bottom
corner the green silk was worn away into a
hole, and General Gordon and a drummer
boy had been lost down it. The lowest E
in the bass testified to the fact that they were
not lost but merely gone behind, and Ian
felt he could still get into communication
with them by striking that now muffled note.
But he much desired to hold them in his
fingers once more, and was always asking
when the piano-tuner was coming again.

Over the consulting-room came the large
bedroom.

In lan's opinion there was no more
splendidly beautiful thing in the world than
the bedstead that stood there. A pale pink
satin eiderdown was spread over it nowadays,
unquestionably pleasant to feel and look at,
even though it had to be respected. The
days were past, long past, fully a month past,
when there had been a shabby green eider-
quilt, into which you could take a header
without fear of rebuke. But his mother
had been ill about a month ago, and had

28 JOHN OF DAUNT.

stayed in bed dull and dispirited for days,
and his father had come flying upstairs one
morning with his motor-goggles still on,
and in his arms a huge parcel that he had
brought home in the back of the car. He
had torn the paper off, and hurriedly
smothered his wife over with the rose-pink
loveliness, and hurriedly kissed her.

" Bottle of tonic ; take between meals,"
he said. " Must go. Man in a fit, Daisy
says. Jerdan ; do you know the name ? "

" Bottom of street, toyshop, just come.
Yes, looks apoplectic," she had answered.
" How lovely of you, Steve ! But you
shouldn't. Why, you wouldn't get yourself a
new suit ! Oh, how lovely ! Just my colour."

But it was not the hangings and the quilt
that appealed to Ian as passionately as the
mother-of-pearl bedstead itself that had
been his mother's wedding present from her
mother.

In the spindles of it and inlaid on its posts
he had rediscovered bits of the sunrise,
and of dew, of spray with the sun on it, of
rainbow ends.

THE HOUSE. 29

Over the left-hand end of the foot-rail a
scarf of lace or silk was always carefully
placed when his maternal grandmother was
expected ; or else a hastily snatched up towel
from the washstand was hung there. For
here was a spindle shamelessly broken open
and ruined and exposed. Ian, at six, had
picked up a fact or two at kindergarten
about pearl and mother-of-pearl, and had
gone to discover, with the tin-opener and a
hammer, whether oysters were imbedded
here too.

But even after two years the sight of the
ruin on the beautiful thing saddened him
whenever he noticed it. Fortunately, this
was not often.

The bedroom opened on to a glassed-in
verandah where all the glorious sunshine of
the crowded suburban street came to flood
itself on winter mornings.

Here, behind the thin muslin curtains that
hung on the glass, much of the real life of
the family passed.

Here, in a corner, stood the cupboard that
held the blacking-brushes ; here hung Dee's

30 JOHN OF DAUNT.

swing. In that chintz-covered box there were
at least thirteen dolls and all the infinite
necessities of modern dolls ; here was a large
Teddy-bear with one side of it gone bald with
frequent huggings ; here was the celluloid
platypus without which the morning bath
would not have been the morning bath.

Here were any of lan's regiments that
were not on active service about the piano,
or occupying strongly fortified positions on
the staircases. You never walked freely
on the linoleum here until you had ascertained
that there were no companies drawn up upon
the squares of it, no red-cross ambulance
waggon standing by awaiting a call, not even
a scarred and solitary sentry defending an
outpost.

Here was the white elephant of the family,
the gigantic rocking-horse presented to Ian
when he was two days old by a patient who
held his father in liveliest gratitude for
restoration to health.

Owing to the dimensions of the dear great
beast there was no room left for the children's
beds to stand at ease on the floor, so fatherly

THE HOUSE. 31

ingenuity had devised ship's bunks against
the wall side of the balcony, and fat little
Dee slept soundly in the lower one, while Ian
happily climbed a ladder to his heights and
fell to sleep, sharing with birds the exulting
confidence that comes from being right off
the ground of the earth.

The top story of the house resolved itself
into two attics, in one of which Germany
and Australia lay now uneasily along opposite
walls ; and in the other were piled the over-
flowings of the family, the travelling-trunks,
the cradle, the perambulator, the past season's
clothes, the unnecessary necessities that must
have storage. Here, too, was a little bench
and a hammer and wood and nails, carefully
calculated to act as a lightning conductor
for lan's pent-up energies, and occasionally
succeeding in doing so.

But it was getting-up time, and the balcony
was the present scene of operations. Ian
returned to it, glad-eyed, ready for anything.

CHAPTER IV.

GETTING DRESSED.

" The common sin of babyhood objecting to be dressed,
If you leave it to accumulate at compound interest,
For anything you know may represent, if you're alive,
A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five."

— GILBERT.

'T^HE sunshiny place was in all the
customary chaos of the hour. '

The chintz box had disgorged its con-
tents and the thirteen dolls sat about the
lower bunk, quite ready for the day's fray.
Dee, three-year-old edition of Ian, but rounder,
chubbier ; Dee, with the imp in her eyes
existent, but more often, as became her
tenderer years, subordinated by the angel,
sat on the edge of her bunk solemnly eating
the morning biscuit that kept her body and
soul together until breakfast time.

She had had her chill winter's bath as her

33

' When you say wicked words/ said the little boy."
John of Daunt] {Chapter IV

GETTING DRESSED. 33

reddened cheeks testified and her soft, dark
hair was still bunched tightly up from it.
She had reached the petticoat stage of her
toilet and had one sock and one shoe on
when the pangs of appetite had set in and
caused an interlude. So she sat on the
edge of her bunk now and munched silently,
the half-bald Teddy bear, Boodle yclept,
with biscuit crumbs also on his mouth, seated
beside her. Together they absorbed and
enjoyed in silence the doings of the father
and the mother and Ian.

Mrs. Daunt was clad in a kimona of ex-
quisite rose-pink silk ; she had been simply
compelled to buy it to match the eiderdown.
No one with rich masses of crinkly dark-
brown hair could have risen up from beneath
that eiderdown of rose-pink and put on any
old Japanese kimona for the brushing and
combing process of those masses.

She sat on the step now between bedroom and
sunny balcony, brushing vigorously, and the
gleam of the rose-pink, and the glint of sun en-
meshed in the dark curtain of hair made Dee's
biscuit taste better and forced Ian to whistle.

34 JOHN OF DAUNT.

She was a tall young woman, this Mrs.
Daunt, as slender at thirty as she had been
ten years before, when the doctor bore her
off almost by force, so unwilling were the
detaining hands, from a home of wealth and
spaciousness to this crowded suburban street
and the narrow house that rose therein, two
and two and two and two.

When her eyes smiled mischievously at
you from between the black curl of their
lashes you thought you knew from where
the children derived those disturbing ex-
pressions of theirs.

Dr. Daunt was still in his towelling dressing-
gown of brown and white stripe, that made
him look akin to the familiar zebra in the
picture book, and to the friendly verandah
roofs of the shops opposite. He, too, was
beyond the average height and had the same
warm, dark colouring as his wife — her sister
used to say they had chosen each other to
match, both being of artistic incl'nation ;
like hers, his eyes were dark ; like her, he
had a dark, vigorous growth of hair, but his
was cropped down till it felt more than a little

GETTING DRESSED. 35

like the blacking-brush to Dee's tenderly
exploring fingers.

He was hastily polishing up his boots.

" Dad," said Ian, in his challenging voice,
" Mr. Middleton doesn't clean his own
boots."

" That's no concern of mine, my son,"
answered the doctor. " I hope you didn't
find it necessary to tell him you considered
he was committing a crime by not blacking
them."

"Yes, I did," said Ian stoutly; "I told
him you thought women oughtn't to clean
men's boots, an' if you haven't got a man
servant you've just got to do it yourself.
Well, they haven't. There's only Bella and
Jane to do their work, and both of them are
women."

" Oh, my son Ian, Ian, my son ! " groaned
the Doctor.

" You did say it, Dad," Ian said indignantly,
" I'm not making up. When I asked you
why you made yourself so dirty, that's what
you said."

" But I didn't tell you to go and repeat it

36 JOHN OF DAUNT.

to other people, you young prig," stormed
his father.

" You didn't tell me not to/' maintained
Ian stubbornly.

"I'm always telling you not to talk in
other people's houses about the things that
go on here, isn't that so ? " said his father.

" Yes," said Ian, his lip quivering at the
wrath in his father's tone.

" Well, what do you mean by it, then ? "
demanded the Doctor.

Things struggled to express themselves
in the boy's mind, things like, " Con's father,
being Con's father, ought to do everything
just right too, and if you, my father, think
it is just right to black your own boots,
however dirty you get, then it is right, and
Con's father's got to be shown it is right."
However, the sentiments would not arrange
themselves in words.

" I— don't know," was all he said, and his
voice sounded sulky.

" I say, Dinky," said the Doctor, turning
vexed eyes on his wife's curtained head,
" can't you stop this young reprobate's

GETTING DRESSED. 37

mouth ? This won't do, you know, it won't
do at any price."

" Lots of things I don't tell a word of, Dad,"
said Ian, his lip quivering more than ever,
and simply forced into a position of defence.

' What sort of things, eh ? Things that
wouldn't matter twopence if you did, I
suppose," said his father.

" No," said Ian, " other things. Not even
to Con." A wave of exceeding admiration
for his own stern repression washed over
him and made his lip quiver more than ever;

His father searched his face.

' What sort of other things, eh ? Out with
it, my man."

' When you say ' Confound,' ' said the
little boy, now fairly sobbing, " I never tell —
never."

"Dinky," said the Doctor, weakly, "I
think I'll go to my bath. Some things are
too much for me."

The curtain of dark hair shook a little ;
an eye gleamed through it.

' You're a good little chap, old son," said
the Doctor, his voice under control again.

38 JOHN OF DAUNT.

' Yes, we've always got to make the best of
our own, haven't we ? But I respect Mr.
Middleton very much, and he, doubtless, has
as good reasons for not cleaning his own
boots as I have for cleaning mine. Anyway,
he doesn't want a small boy to teach him his
duty. What would you think if Con came
along and told me what I had to do ? "

" He'd better try it," said Ian, the imp at
once struggling through his tears.

"Well, I'll be late. Dinky, I say, how
can a man get dressed in time with this sort
of thing going on ? " The Doctor dropped
the blacking-brush and plunged into his
bedroom. " Where's my shaving water ?
Can't you make that woman, Daisy, under-
stand I must and will have my shaving
water by half-past seven ? Gertrud always
did. Oh, confound ! "

Ian gave him a look of most brotherly love
and understanding.

" Go and have your bath, you young
beggar," said his father, pulled up short
again. But Ian stood on his hands a full
minute or two first and balanced his pink-

GETTING DRESSED. 39

clad legs in the air ; a surcharge of emotion
before breakfast is a thing to be got rid of as
soon as possible.

' What hands ! " cried his mother, seeing
them spread on the linoleum in front of
her. " What on earth have you been doing,
boy ? "

Ian had to look at them attentively to
remember ; then the oiliness of them and
the lint sticking to them from the polishing
cloth recalled past matters.

" Oh, just messing about," he said, and
craftily restored himself to a position where
hands were not so noticeable.

" But what with ? " demanded his mother,
the innocent expression he assumed instantly
rousing suspicion in her.

" Oh, Dinky, for heaven's sake ! " shouted
her husband. " Do you know it's twenty
to eight ? Let him go to his bath, or he'll
be in when I want it. Clear out of this at
once, you little beggar."

" Yes, Dad," said Ian affectionately, " I'm
going this minute, Dad." He departed in
promptest obedience.

40 JOHN OF DAUNT.

The Doctor shaved, he had his bath, he
lost his collar-stud — and found it, with the
united strength of the family — and was on
the eve of plunging downstairs to breakfast
when he heard a sort of triangular duel going
on on the balcony between his wife and his
two children.

Mrs. Daunt's hair was up ; the rose-pink
kimona had given place to a white blouse
and the serge skirt that better befitted the
active-moving mistress of a narrow house:
Ian was dressed in strict accordance with his
agreement with Con : grey suit, grey stockings
turned down with red, Allies' tie. Dee's hair
hung brushed and shining to her waist ;
both her socks were on, both her shoes. But
she was still in her petticoat and the casus
belli was a clean blue frock that she had
deliberately trampled on.

" Hate blue f ocks," she announced. " Want
pink."

" But you have no pink, darling," urged
the mother. " Come, don't be naughty, we
shall be late for breakfast. Quick, let me
button the blue one."

GETTING DRESSED. 41

" Hate blue f'ocks," repeated Dee, and
stamped.

" Oh, Dee — how can you be so tiresome —
listen, there's Daddie ready to go down.
Now, quick, do you hear me ? " Mrs. Daunt
picked up the offending garment and tried to
slip it over the child's head.

But Dee spoiled the manoeuvre by sitting
suddenly down on the ground and moving her
shoulders rapidly about.

" Oh, Dee ! to be naughty like this, and
before breakfast," cried Mrs. Daunt helplessly.

Ian came to the rescue ; he, too, knew how
long a fit of Dee's obstinacy could last.

" Hi, you little silly," he said, " scrambled
eggs, and honey, downstairs; have it on,
quick."

" Pink f ock," said Dee, looking at him
steadily.

"Dee, we shall go down and leave you in
a minute all by yourself," threatened her
mother.

Dee heaved one shoulder, opened her mouth,
screwed up her eyes.

" There, there — well, we won't if you'll be

42 JOHN OF DAUNT.

good and have your frock on," said her mother
desperately.

She knew she was not handling the
matter as a real disciplinarian should, but
then she did so love her husband to have his
breakfast and his start to the day quite free
from any of these tiresome, unaccountable
contests, which from time to time arose
between herself and her really sweet and
generally tractable daughter.

" Oh, don't begin to cry, Dee," she implored.
" Listen, Daddie's going down."

Dee looked through her eyelashes a second ;
she, too, knew that it was peace at any price
while her father was about, and her price
was a pink frock.

" Pink f'ock," she said relentlessly, be-
ginning to squeeze her eyes up again.

" Hi, hi, you little donkey — hi, I'm going
down to eat your breakfast," said Ian, taking
a threatening step towards the door.

Dee emitted a gentle roar.

But now her father was upon the scene.

" What's all this ? " he said, looking at the
three.

GETTING DRESSED. 43

Dee decided to suppress her sobs.

" She doesn't seem to want her blue frock
on, that's all," said Mrs. Daunt, and quite
half excusingly.

" Dee ! " said her father in a tone of
surprise.

" Pink f'ock," said Dee, but in a weakening
tone.

" Why do you want a pink frock ? " he
asked.

How could three years old explain the fact
that her eyes were still so ravished by the
utter beauty of her mother's rose-pink kimona
that all other colours seemed suddenly too
hateful to be worn ? She merely said again,
and this time with heaving breast and stream-
ing eyes, " Pink f'ock, Daddie."

" Dee," said her father gravely, " did
mother tell you to put on this blue
frock ? "

Dee clung convulsively to one of his legs.

" Put it on, dear."

"Well, Daddie button it, not Muvvie,"
bargained the child, suddenly shifting her
ground and picking it up.

44 JOHN OF DAUNT.

He buttoned it patiently, and she looked
through her eyelashes again at her mother.

" Now kiss mother," he ordered, " and say
you are sorry."

" Solly," said Dee, and held up a wet but
perfectly cheerful face to her mother, whom
she knew quite well was beaten in this conflict.

She went downstairs in her father's arms.

" You don't half know how to deal with
the little beggars, Dinky," he said in French
as he went.

Mrs. Daunt laughed ; there was really
nothing else left for her to do.

CHAPTER V.

GERTRUD.

"The worst of me is known and I can say that I am
better than the fame I bear." — SCHILLER.

"DREAKFAST was late, but that was the
fault of the war.

Five years before Dr. Daunt had been
so intensely worried at the sight of his
wife's continual struggles with Australian
domestics that he had set about seeking a
drastic remedy, after the manner of a man
who is always too impatient to brook any
half -measures.

During his medical course he had done
a year's research work at the University of
Cologne, and he had pleasant recollections
of the house where, with sixteen other
students, he had lodged during that time.

Work, domestic work, on an unusually

45

46 JOHN OF DAUNT.

large scale, seemed to him to be conducted
there with an absolute lack of friction or effort
on the part of the mistress of the house. Oak
floors were waxed and polished until you
could barely keep your footing, furniture,
and brass and silver were rubbed until they
made mirrors for you at every turn ; perpetual
and elaborate meals appeared on the table
at the very minute needed ; one's washing
and ironing and mending and darning were
marvellously performed.

The harassed benedict had turned his eyes
from Australia, where household troubles
seemed ceaseless, to these German experiences,
and he decided that there was nothing left
for him to do but make a bold effort to obtain
one, or more, of the thick-set, hard-working
young Maries, or Louisas, or Gretchens, or
Elizabeths, with which every German house
seemed to overflow.

He wrote to his one-time landlady, begging
her assistance in finding such for him and
offering passage money and a pound a week
for wages.

The landlady replied that her only difficulty

GERTRUD. 47

had been not to send forty-five such young
women, so brilliant seemed the prospect to
many a German girl bowed under a heavy
yoke of house servitude for which she received
a mere pittance of a wage.

And so there arrived one morning at the
quay in Sydney, at the wharf of the
Nordeutscher Lloyd, whose name will soon
be less than a memory, Gertrud, flat-footed,
high-cheekboned, high-coloured, Gertrud, with
quiet blue eyes and light, abundant hair ;
Gertrud with one small tin box, one large
bundle sewed up in a rug, one large umbrella
and just four phrases of English :

"Dank you," and " Vas ist der brice,"
and " Scuse, vich ist der vay ? " and " Scuse,
ist not it der dinner-time yet ? "

In five years she had added the English
language to her accomplishments, while Mrs.
Daunt had only too thankfully abandoned
her few such painful phrases as " Ist das
Fruhstuck fertig ? " and " Wollen sie gutigst
bringen ein stuck gerostetes brot " for the
familiar "Is breakfast ready," and "please
bring a slice of toast."

48 JOHN OF DAUNT.

In five years Gertrud had banked two
hundred pounds of her wages, become natural-
ised and quite ceased to wear five petticoats
and two aprons at a time.

She had the narrow house in the suburban
terrace in immaculate condition ; its furniture
shone Teutonically, its glass and silver reflected
the light, its socks and stockings and table
linen were darned in a fashion calculated to
make happy-go-lucky Australia shudder with
silent sympathy.

Mrs. Daunt told her callers, with bated
breath, how the girl had only failed by two
marks in an examination that, had she
passed, would have made her third darner
in the household of the Grand-Duke of
Schleswig-Holstein. To qualify for this posi-
tion she had darned industriously fully four
hours a day for three years, and would have
been able to fill in, quite undetected, a rose-
bud on the ducal damask whenever the
Grand-Duke so far forgot himself as to cut
his bread on the cloth.

" But I could not the thorns so well as
the other girl do," Gertrud had added mourn-

GERTRUD. 49

fully, when recounting her failure to her
Australian mistress. " Thorns they are what
you call uneasy things to darn. However,
it did make for the best, though I did cry
mooch at the losing of it ; I am now here,
and she who did pass, her eyesight it has
broke down."

" And what about the unfortunate Grand-
Duke of Schleswig-Holstein ? " Mrs. Daunt
had asked. " Who will darn the thorns
on the rose-stems of his best cloths now ? "

" Ach, that is nosing," said Gertrud con-
temptuously, " twenty more ozzer girls ready
her blace to dake."

" And you are not sorry you came to
Australia, Gertrud ? "

Mrs. Daunt liked occasionally to reassure
herself that this girl who had torn herself
up by the roots from her fatherland, and
come twelve thousand miles to polish floors
and make comfort for strangers, was not
filled with unhappiness at the step.

" Ach, nein," said Gertrud. " Shermany,
it iss a ferry gut country if you are ferry rich

but zere are too many of us ferry poor and ve

D

50 JOHN OF DAUNT.

do haf too hard to vork and ve do haf too
little money and too mooch to bear. It iss
not too good to be voman in Shermany."

Mrs. Daunt looked at the short, work-
thickened figure, at the strong face with the
repression of centuries stamped upon it, and
felt like a butterfly talking to a draught-
horse.

" It seems better to you to be a woman in
Australia ? " she asked.

" Ach, ya, it iss ferry well here," Gertrud
conceded, unwillingly. Her training made
her despise the inefficient, independent women
with whom she came into contact in this new
country, but she could not help envying
them their outlook and emancipation.

She flung a glance to where, face downwards
on the floor of the balcony, Ian was sprawled
manipulating his troops.

' The boy out zere," she said, " in
Shermany, he would his seven brudders
by now haf."

" Oh, Gertrud ! " said Mrs. Daunt weakly.

" Ja, it iss hard," Gertrud allowed, " but
der Kaiser, he must his armies haf."

GERTRUD. 51

That was before the war.

When it broke out and Australia, despite
its distance, began to rock in the wash of the
waves of it, the narrow house in Trafalgar
Terrace was faced with its own problem of
aliens.

It began a week after England declared war.

A second maid had always been kept by
the Daunts to assist Gertrud, but she was
a movable feast after the manner of the rest-
less Australian, while Gertrud was a fixed
observance.

If the movable feast happened to be a fair
cook and laundress, then Gertrud became
nursery-housemaid and mender of torn gar-
ments, answerer of telephone, opener of
door, usherer in of patients.

Clad in her black dress, with a large mob-
cap on her head and a large white muslin
apron on, she lent a reassuring air to the
establishment in her last-named capacity,
and so careful was she of messages, so strict
about the precedence of patients in the wait-
ing-room, so helpful in cases of emergency,
that the Doctor suffered considerably when-

52 JOHN OF DAUNT.

ever his wife was forced to put her into com-
mand of the kitchen and give him a flighty
young person as doormaid.

But when the war broke out matters in
the basement and attic of No. i, Trafalgar
Terrace, became highly complicated.

The cook, an inefficient and undependable
person, at once practically demanded of
Mrs. Daunt the instant dismissal of Gertrud.

She swept from her mind all the occasions
on which the German had helped her drag
a dinner from disgrace and send it into the
dining-room fit to be seen ; she ignored all
the times that Gertrud had spent her evenings
ironing Dee's white muslin frocks, which
work belonged to herself, Anna, but was
disliked. The first advance of the Germans
in France sent her hot-foot upstairs from
the kitchen. Gertrud must be got rid of.

" But what would become of her, Anna ? "
asked Mrs. Daunt.

Anna expressed herself frankly as being
absolutely indifferent upon this point. The
main thing was that she should be got rid of.

" You see we invited her here ourselves

GERTRUD. 53

brought her here," said Mrs. Daunt. " We
can't turn her out in the streets for what is
certainly not her fault, and she has made no
friends, as you know."

Anna was heard to commit herself to a
statement that the streets were too good for
her ; she ought to be clapped straight into gaol.

" But why should Australia be put to the
expense of keeping her when she can keep
herself by working ? " asked Mrs. Daunt.

But Anna would hear no arguments, and
as her mistress refused to afford her the
spectacle of Gertrud turned out box and
bundle into the streets, she herself packed
up and departed in high dudgeon.

For a week matters progressed peaceably ;
no one had yet been found to fill Anna's place,
but Gertrud was well able to discharge the
work of two servants, and seemed to rather
enjoy having the house to herself. She was,
it seemed, taking the European convulsion
with much philosophy. But then the weather
in the basement changed without warning.

The Doctor, who had been giving his
services at the suburb's newly-formed drill

54 JOHN OF DAUNT.

and rifle club, rang up one very wet evening
to say a squad of men who had come over
from a distant suburb to demonstrate had
missed its train, and was soaking wet. Could
Dinky manage hot coffee for them in the
waiting-room to fill up the interval till the
next train went ?

Dinky rose to the occasion.

She mustered thirty cups and saucers in
the waiting-room ; she ran down to the
kitchen, where Gertrud was sitting knitting
great, grey stockings for herself against the
coming winter.

'• She set her to making big jugs of coffee,
and to opening tins of condensed milk, while
she herself cut piles of sandwiches, opened
tins of biscuits, and set out all the delicate
cakes that were standing in readiness for
her own day " at home" on the morrow.

"There they are! " she cried as the bell
rang. " Run, Gertrud, and let them in, and
I will be pouring the coffee into the jugs."

Gertrud went upstairs to the door. When
she returned Mrs. Daunt had the coffee ready
and was tossing off her apron.

GERTRUD. 55

" Bring it up as quickly as possible, please,
Gertrud," she said, and ran up herself to
welcome her guests.

The thirty wet arrivals sat round and about
the long table that had been hastily swept
clear of magazines, and they looked ex-
pectantly at the cups and they sniffed the
fragrance of good coffee, real, German-made
coffee, that filled the house, but that came no
closer even after five minutes' waiting.

Mrs. Daunt, at an impatient glance from
her husband, went downstairs at last to
investigate, and found Gertrud standing
with her arms folded in the middle of the
kitchen.

In the sink, a wet mass, were all the sand-
wiches and cakes and biscuits, their state of
moisture being due to the coffee which had,
every drop of it, been poured over them.

" Gertrud ! " gasped Mrs. Daunt. When
temporarily bereft of the powers of language,
we most of us have just sufficient strength
left to clutch at a name.

" Nein," said Gertrud, " I vill not help to
drink and feed men who go to fight my

56 JOHN OF DAUNT.

country." She sat down on a chair and folded
her arms more tightly than ever.

Dr. Daunt bore off his thirty wet guests to
a not far distant tea-room where coffee, if not
of German make, restored their circulation
and made them see the humour of the episode.
But he let himself into his narrow house
again with a grim face. This came of trying
to be magnanimous ; a German plainly was
a German, and must be treated as a German.
He must go and settle the matter now.

He found Mrs. Daunt a little pale, but quite
composed, waiting for him in the kitchen.

Gertrud, it seemed, had run amuck in
his absence ; for five minutes the stolid,
thick-set, respectful person had run clean
amuck.

She had charged at the saucepan-stand
that stood, tall sentinel beside the gas-stove,
and she had thrown the aluminium saucepans
that were ranged there, one by one, into a
corner.

She had followed them by their lids, which
stood on another shelf by themselves.

" What did you do ? " the Doctor asked his

GERTRUD. 57

wife, and whistling, surveyed the strange
heap of familiar articles.

" Didn't do anything," said Mrs. Daunt,
;< just stood there in the doorway and
watched her."

" By Jove, Dinky — she might have hurt
you. I oughtn't to have gone out. You
should have gone away." The Doctor looked
greatly disturbed.

' You don't imagine I'd let a German think
I was afraid of her, do you ? " quoth Dinky
in fine scorn.

" And then what did she do ? "

" Flung up her arms and rushed upstairs. I
ran after her then, I can tell you, for I thought
she might be going to hurt the children, but
she rushed on right up to her room and locked
herself in. And she burst out crying at the
top of her voice. She's crying still."

" Poor devil ! "

" Yes, yes."

" Let her sleep it off. And us too. George !
Dinky, I'm tired. Let's get to bed. I'm
bound to be called out to-night. Let's get to
bed. I'll grapple with the Hun in the morning.

58 JOHN OF DAUNT.

But what on earth is going to happen to-
morrow ? "

" Oh, I'll manage," said Mrs. Daunt, " don't
you worry. I'll sweep your rooms, and Ian
can answer the door, and then I'll rush round
to a registry and drag some one back, if I have
to promise them two pounds a week."

The Doctor, called out at four o'clock
to help new life into the world, had not
returned at eight, so Dinky had to grapple
with the Hun alone.

She ran down at seven o'clock to the base-
ment to perform brush and duster service
and to wonder how on earth one set about
preparing an entire breakfast for an entire
family, single-handed.

The aluminium saucepans were ranged
one over the other in decreasing sizes from
the bottom of the stand to the top. The lids
hung one after the other in a long, peaceable
row. Breakfast was set as usual in the blue
and white dining-room. lan's porridge
simmered away in one little saucepan on the
gas-stove. The Doctor's zwieback was growing
crisp in the oven. Dee's special " cat jumped

GERTRUD. 59

over the moon " bowl stood on the table
awaiting its bread and milk ; the eggs and the
bacon lay ready for the auspicious moment
of cooking.

" Ach, I am sorry," said the woman, and
made a tossing motion with her arms. Her
face was swollen with weeping.

' Yes, I think you should be, Gertrud,"
said Mrs. Daunt quietly.

" Shall you haf to get rid of me ? " The
woman had caught the phrase from Anna,
who had used it often in her hearing.

' Why, Gertrud, I must, you know. What
else could I do ? " said Mrs. Daunt.

" But I vas joost mad a minute, and there
vill be no more. Ach, you not get rid of me ! "

" I will get you a place with people of your
own nation, Gertrud," said Mrs. Daunt. " I
could not have you here, feeling to us as you
did last night. I will ring up and see if Mrs.
Schwarz will take you to-day."

" Ach nein." Gertrud almost screamed.
" I vould not vork for Shermans. Shermans
vork Shermans to death. I vork for you."

" No, Gertrud," said Mrs. Daunt steadily,

60 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" I don't any longer want you to work
for me."

" Ach ja," insisted Gertrud, " I vas joost
mad a minute, no more. Ze baker, he said I
vas Sherman, and ze butcher he says, hoch der
Kaiser, vhen he for the orders comes. And
vhen I go out I am fraidened to speak 'cause
I am in English country and zey look at me.
And vhen I come in I am in English house
and ze schmall boy is kilhng Shermans on ze
staircase all ze day. An' all ze time I stay
quite still, quite quiet and schpeak not. But
I get mad in ze head a minute when I see
zose men that vant to fight my Kaiser come
in to drink my coffee zat I hav made."

" Poor devil ! " said the Doctor again, when
the story was recounted to him.

" Yes," said Mrs. Daunt, " I am often
sorry for you, Gertrud. I know it must be
very hard. If there had been a chance to
get you back to your own country we should
have taken it. But there wasn't. And now
you must go to Mrs. Schwarz."
,; " Ach, nein," wept Gertrud, " you not get
rid of me. If now in zis strange land to

GERTRUD. 61

anuzzer strange house I haf to go I jump
straight in ze sea and not go. Ze Doctor
now I know, and ze baby and you, and ze
schmall boy who is not so bad, an' I stay here
now till ze var iss ofer."

And no attempts, not even the Doctor's,
had been able to dislodge her.

They had been forced to overlook the out-
break and keep her with them, feeling in a
way responsible for her since she had given
them five years of faithful service, and since
it was they who had uprooted her.

" But keep her down in the basement," the
Doctor had said ; "it would be as much as
my practice is worth to have her opening the
door just now. And get me some one to run
my part of the show. And quick and lively,
Dinky, dear."

So Daisy had come to Number One,
Trafalgar Terrace. Her references were not
of the best, and she was slipshod, unless
continually looked after, and she was un-
truthful and without principle, as Master Ian
had speedily discovered. But she was the
only housemaid at the registry offices who

62 JOHN OF DAUNT.

did not at once turn Mrs. Daunt down for
having a German under her roof.

Daisy took life calmly as persons of adipose
deposit not infrequently do.

" S'long as she doesn't want to let bombs
off from the sausage machine I don't mind
where she was born," said Daisy comfortably.

The reason the war was to blame, this
particular morning, for making breakfast
late, was because Daisy was late in setting
the table, just as she was always late for
everything.

But she might not be discharged on that
account, because where else might be found so
unprejudiced a person ?

CHAPTER VI.

BACON AND NEWS OF THE DAY.

'"T^HE reason that Daisy was late in setting
her table was, that she had stopped
to read in the just-arrived morning papers
all the frightful details of the sinking of a
great passenger steamer.

Furthermore, she had stopped to ascertain
pointedly from Gertrud what her opinion now
was of her old Kaiser.

And Gertrud had stopped to give that
opinion.

Mrs. Daunt had taken Daisy aside weeks
before and had strictly forbidden her to
mention international subjects to Gertrud.

She had also taken Gertrud aside and laid
the same embargo upon her with respect to
Daisy.

The result was they always carefully closed
63

64 JOHN OF DAUNT.

the kitchen door before they mentioned such
matters to each other.

And they impressed it upon Ian, who took
an unholy delight in these conflicts, that it
was a point of honour with him not to mention
such matters upstairs.

But on this particular morning it certainly
delayed breakfast.

There were a certain number of patients
already in the waiting-room, for the Doctor's
morning hours at home were half -past eight to
half-past ten, and an early arrival meant
precedence, unless an appointment had been
made.

He filled in the time while he awaited a
summons to the breakfast-table by seeing two
or three of these.

Dee, also at a loose end while she awaited
" the cow jumped over the moon " and its
contents ; Dee also filled in her time by seeing
a few of the patients. Why not ? Her father
had pointedly closed the consulting-room
door in her face ; her mother had gone to
speed breakfast ; nor Gertrud, nor Daisy,
nor even Ian were " keeping an eye on her."

' ' No," she said firmly, ' I might catch your 'zeezes.' "
John of Daunt] [Chapter VI

BACON AND NEWS OF THE DAY. 65

Dee put a rosy, inquiring little face into the
waiting-room door.

' Why, you dear little girl — you bonny little
thing, come and say good morning ! " cried
an elderly lady who was sitting by the table.

The child came in, cautiously.

There was a workman there with a finger
to be strapped up ; a dressmaker to have
her eyes looked at ; a schoolgirl for stitches
to be taken out of a hockey injury; an elderly
lady and a business man or two. They were
weary of looking at each other and anxious
to get on their way to town and to their
business ; the soft-faced little child made a
not unwelcome diversion.

" Come here, my dear," said the elderly
lady, pleasantly ; she was a grandmother
and quite aware of her irresistible way with
small children. Already her fingers were
fumbling in her handbag for one of the tiny
dolls that generally dwelt there.

Dee felt the charm — realised that the fingers
were fumbling for something quite fascinating.

" I can't," she said, stopping dead with a
prodigious sigh.

E

66 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" Why can't you ? " said the lady, amused.
" Have you no legs ? "

The child looked round the table at the
waiting people.

" Some of you might kiss me," she said,
shaking her head sorrowfully.

" And why not ? " said the grandmother.
" I should like to very much indeed."

But her father's word was real law to Dee.

" No," she said firmly, " I might catch your
'zeezes." She sighed again and slipped away
to find something, somewhere, to make up
for the fascination of the lady with the
handbag. Diseases were really very vexatious
drawbacks to interesting people.

But at last breakfast was ready.

" How's de war, Daddie ? " said Dee,
settling into her high chair at her father's
elbow and superintending him as he unfolded
the morning paper.

" Quite well, thank you, Miss Daunt," he
replied.

" Zat's right," said Dee heartily, and
addressed herself without more ado to the
always pleasant task of working through con-

BACON AND NEWS OF THE DAY. 67

siderable deposits of bread and milk to bring
the beloved cow and the moon and the little
dog to light.

Occasionally, Dr. and Mrs. Daunt exchanged
words about the gigantic disaster over the
papers in which they were both absorbed ;
once or twice they spoke in French, deeming
the discussion of such frightful things not
food for their babes. Ian looked on restlessly.
He had listened to the most minute and grue-
some of the details when they were being
discussed by Daisy and the milkman, and it
was vexatious that his thirst for still more
should be interfered with. He finished his
porridge gloomily. He took the top off his
egg without pretending anything — not even
that it was the head of the enemy.

" Father," he said at last.

" My son," said the Doctor.

Ian respected the morning paper as a rule,
and let it be read in peace, but really there
had to be exceptions.

" Father, Daisy says Mr. Schwarz's name
is down on the slate to be here at ten o'clock,"
he said, challengingly.

68 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" Um, yes," said his father. " Dinky, this
is pretty beastly coffee. Try another brand."

" Father," — the boy's eyes were excited—
" couldn't you poisonous gas him or some-
thing ? I could help. I'd hold his feet while
you tied them ! "

Dr. Daunt hastily tried to explain to the
mind of eight years old the reason that war
with the soldiers did not mean war with
civilians, and that people must be made well
by doctors whatever their nationality. Ian
thought the arguments very poor.

" He might have a bomb in his pocket and
let it off in your room when you start to cure
him," he said.

The Doctor professed himself willing to
take the risk and retired behind his paper
again .

'\Daddie," said Dee.

" My daughter."

" Bake, Daddie," said Dee.

The Doctor gravely cut a tiny strip of
bacon from the piece he had just taken on his
own plate, and he laid it on the clean plate
near him upon which Mary, Mary, quite

BACON AND NEWS OF THE DAY. 69

contrary, watered silver bells and cockle-
shells and columbines all in a row.

" Sanks, darling," said Dee.

The Doctor went back to his paper.

" Daddie ! " said Dee.

There was pained surprise in her tone. He
looked at her inquiringly.

1 You forgetted Boodle, Daddie," said the
child.

He cut another strip, a smaller one still,
and laid it carefully on the nose of Boodle,
who was, of course, squeezed up in his
daughter's high chair partaking of everything.

He apologised handsomely for the omission
and offered the dear beast a drink from his
coffee-cup as a means of amends. The dear
beast took it, and Dee dried its mouth on her
feeder with great satisfaction.

" Father," said Ian restlessly

" Hello, hello."

" Well, couldn't you get him out to the
garage to look at something, and then sun'ly
shut the door and intern him fast. I'd help.
I can push like anything."

But the Doctor was really deep in a leader.

70 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" H'sh, darling," said Mrs. Daunt. " Poor
Daddie has to go in a minute."

Ian h'shed, with unhappy eyes.

When the Doctor laid down his paper and
took up the appointment slate, whereon the
unspeakable Mr. Schwarz lurked in the midst
of perfectly innocent persons, he cast an eye
towards his son.

" Don't go up to the Middletons to-day, Ian,
old chap," he said. " I don't like Con's throat
too well."
f " Oh, I say, Dad I "

" Yes, I'm sorry. I'll be going in to look
at him on my rounds, and if it's nothing
I'll tell you at lunch and you shall go this
afternoon."

" But I want to see if he knows about the
big ship being sunk," said Ian feverishly.

" I'm sorry, old chap. When the patients
have all gone perhaps mother will let you
ring him up."

" But Dad "

" Silence, Ian."

" Dad ! If we tied somefink round his
mouth so he couldn't breaf on me." In

BACON AND NEWS OF THE DAY. 71

strenuous moments lan's " th's " became
very nearly allied to those of Dee.

" Did you hear me tell you to be silent,
sir ? "

" Yes— but, Dad "

" Ian — go and stand quite still on that
chair for ten minutes — till the clock strikes
nine."

" Yes, Daddie."

The boy plunged at the chair, scrambled
up and stood there with his hands behind
him, the tears running down his face, the
unmanly, miserable tears that he so despised
and yet that would come in terrible moments
like these.

Dee hovered round his feet, stroking them
lovingly.

" Poor ! " she said. " Oh, poor ! He's
good now, Daddie — kite good."

But the Doctor had to brush past her and
go, two stairs at a time, up to the patients
who were fast growing in number.

It was not until ten o'clock that he had a
moment to think of his family again, and then
a vision of the eager little boy blindly fighting

72 JOHN OF DAUNT.

tears on a chair came back to him with a rush.
For Mr. Heinrich Schwarz was in the chair
opposite to him ponderously setting out all
the symptoms of heavy indigestion, and as
the Doctor listened to, and looked at, and a
little pondered, the alien, his eye was suddenly
caught by a gleam of metal.

The sixth battalion of Hussars, with
fixed bayonets, occupied the corner of the
revolving bookcase that was right at the
elbow of the " patient's " chair.

Half hidden by a sheet of paper, and yet
in a strong situation on the desk at his own
elbow, stood Nelson, Wellington, General
Gordon, and the scarred chief of the Zulus.

The little boy had watched for a moment
while his father was seeing a patient out of
the front door, and had slipped in to safely
fortify the position before the enemy could
arrive.

CHAPTER VII.

NUMBER SEVEN, TRAFALGAR TERRACE.

" "LJELLO, that you, John of Daunt ? I
thought it was a German cannon-
ball," said Mr. Middleton, just stepping
nimbly off his doorstep in time to avoid
being collided with by the violent inrush
of his son's friend of friends.

Ian was too excited even to remove his cap,
a point so tremendously insisted upon by his
mother that he rarely forgot it.

He just stood there, as a little dog stands
with its tongue hanging out and its breath
coming quickly.

" And how are you this morning, John of
Daunt ? " Mr. Middleton pursued genially.
" And how much mischief have you managed
thus early in the day ? And how much
have you got on the cards to be accomplished
before you go to bed ? "

73

74 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Ian answered these pleasantries with a
hurried smile, and looked anxiously at the
house.

" No," said Mr. Middleton, " Con can wait.
Suppose you give me the pleasure of your
company for five minutes or so. Suppose
you walk down to the tram with me, as Con
can't. It won't keep you long."

Ian sighed, but was forced to comply.
Fathers were fathers after all. He turned and
walked side by side with the burly parent of
his friend.

The burly parent regarded him enviously.
This young dare-devil, whose exploits he
knew better than most, was exactly the
manner of son he would have ordered for
himself if sons could have been ordered from
approved models. He liked the set of the
young head, the fire of the young eyes, the
stinging colour in the young face ; he liked the
" cheek j" of the little beggar, who was never
afraid of him, as Con was nearly always afraid.

That small boy whom he had left behind
him shut up in a bedroom with flannel round
his neck, that small boy, Con, the only son

NUMBER SEVEN, TRAFALGAR TERRACE. 75

vouchsafed to him amid a quiverful of five
daughters, filled him with but a fretful fond-
ness. He was such a weakly, easily intimi-
dated little fellow, ,he was so obedient, so
anxious to please, so conscientious — such a
weak replica of two or three of the little girls,
that his father hailed Con's companionship
for him with heartiest favour, and would hear
none of the misgivings about it to which his
wife was prone.

" If I gave you a shilling, John of Daunt,"
he said as they walked along, " how ill could
you make yourself with it ? "

lan's eyes sparkled ; money was the most
pressing need of the moment.

" Are you having me ? " he said, doubting
such dazzling fortune. His own money-box,
just forced open with the tin-opener (his thumb
was still bleeding from it) had only yielded
twopence, and it was unlikely that Con's held
much more, since crackers had just begun
to be displayed ready for Eight-Hour Day in
the toyshop of the man who was subject to fits.

" No," said Mr. Middleton, " my intentions
are perfectly honest. I merely ask because I

76 JOHN OF DAUNT.

desire information. How ill can a boy make
himself for a shilling ? "

" Oh, I shouldn't eat it all myself," said
Ian comfortingly.

" N-n-no. That's just what I was afraid
of," agreed Mr. Middleton. ' You see, you've
got the digestion of an emu, but Con hasn't.
Last shilling I gave you we were up all night
with Con and had to ring up for your father."

" Oh, that time ! " said Ian, recollecting
with an effort ; " yes, we're not going to get
water-melon at that shop again. I got a
pain too that time."

" Oh, you did, did you ? I shouldn't have
expected it," said Mr. Middleton. " But,
after all, it doesn't matter so much you
getting a pain with your father so handy.
When Con gets a water-melon pain it's a
different matter. It costs me ten-and-six."

" The med'sin's the same," said Ian,
shuddering suddenly at the remembrance.
Then he headed Mr. Middleton firmly back
to the point at issue.

" Are you having me — about the shilling ? "
he said.

NUMBER SEVEN, TRAFALGAR TERRACE. 77

" If you'll pass me your word as a gentle-
man that it shan't be water-melon," said
Mr. Middleton.

" They've gone out," said Ian succinctly.

" But what about green peaches," said Mr.
Middleton warily. ' They are in, doubtless,
and I've an uncomfortable recollection of
green peaches once costing me a guinea,
without counting the chemist."

" Oh, those ! " said Ian. " We didn't buy
those, Mr. Middleton. I just got them off a
tree in the next door yard."

" Cigarettes, also, I have an objection to —
for Con," said Mr. Middleton. " Those last
laid him out rather badly."

" They made me pretty sick, too," con-
fessed Ian magnanimously. " I won't get
cigarettes with it, Mr. Middleton, true's faith."

" Well, here you are, and here's my tram."
The burly gentleman disbursed the shilling,
nodded to the glad-eyed boy, and was gone.

Ian went bursting back again along the
street, bursting into the gate of No. 7 again,
bursting in through the kitchen and up the
steps from the basement, and up the stairs to

78 JOHN OF DAUNT.

the dining-room, used in this house for the pur-
pose for which it was architecturally designed.

He thought he knew, from long knowledge
of the family, precisely what the occupations
of each individual member of it would be at
this hour — a little after half -past nine.

Mrs. Middleton would be still in bed ; she
was a semi-invalid and never rose until mid-
day ; as soon as she heard him she would call
him into her room and to her bedside and
admonish him about all the things he was not
to let Con do on any account. And he would
stand beside her and count the flowers on
her flowered dressing- jacket, and count the
buttons on it and wonder if they were real
oyster pearl or made-up pearl, and count the
bottles of medicine on the table, and promise
with great assurance.

Two little girls would be playing shop on
the front balcony with scales and weights and
kitchen stores ; he despised these little girls,
they were so like each other and so inad-
venturous and so beyond him in the school
they all attended when it was not, as it was
to-day, closed for the holidays.

NUMBER SEVEN, TRAFALGAR TERRACE. 79

The next two little girls in the family he
took no notice of whatever. They were
perfectly uninteresting persons with long, light
plaits that he did not even have a temptation
to pull. They were about twelve and four-
teen years of age and were in the upper part
of the school he attended.

With the next girl, Barbara, he was passion-
ately in love. She was eighteen, and did
her hair up for afternoons, though she found
it such a difficult matter yet that she usually
came to breakfast with it hanging down
her back.

She generally seemed to have a chocolate-
box in her hand when Ian was about, and she
always held it out to him with an invitation
to " take one." When he took one, timidly —
she was the only person in the world with
whom he was really timid — she used to laugh
and show her gleaming teeth — he idolised her
teeth — and tell him to take more. Upon
which he would take two and back away
hastily ; he could not bear to think of de-
priving her of more. His mode of procedure
with the chocolates themselves was always

86 JOHN OF DAUNT.

the same ; he ate the first one from beginning
to end ; the second he sucked half-way
through, then wrapped it carefully up in its
silver paper again and put it away to treasure
in his pocket. His mother used to remove
the tokens each week and patiently sponge the
little pockets clean again.

When he put his head into the dining-room
this particular morning Barbara was the only
member of the family present.

She was explaining sorrowfully to her
dearest friend, who, in a black velvet foraging
cap and her new winter furs, had just come
to call for her to go shopping, that she had to
stay at home and look after Con, who seemed
on the verge of another of his illnesses. No,
she must not be tempted out, even though
Minter & Co. had the sweetest of waist-belts
at one-and-elevenpence which would all as-
suredly have gone by Monday. Her mother
was too ill to get up at all ; Amy and Ida had
gone to play in a basketball match ; Erne
and Noela had to be kept happy and kept
away from Con, who, though up and dressed,
was in isolation in his bedroom.

NUMBER SEVEN, TRAFALGAR TERRACE. 81

" But you have two servants," grumbled
the dearest friend ; " surely they can keep
an eye on the children ? It is not as if they
were babies."

1 But the Doctor is coming to Con,"
explained Barbara. "I'll have to be here to
see what he says, and get the boy to bed
again if he has to go. He really is the
unluckiest youngster. He's been crying his
eyes out just now because they've rung up
from the Daunts to say his chum can't
come up to-day."

' Well, all I can say is, I'm glad my little
brothers are big brothers," said the dearest
friend, sighing in disgust. " I did want you
to come. However, I won't catch this tram,
I'll wait till the next, and you can help me
look over these patterns of crepe de chine.
There's a lovely apricot one, only I'd have
to get new shoes to match. You've got time
enough for that, haven't you, or have you to
go and sit on top of Con to keep him safe ? "

" Oh, no," said Barbara, " no, I've just
made him a cup of paste, and he's sticking
postage stamps in his album. He'll be all

82 JOHN OF DAUNT.

right for an hour or two. He always is all
right as long as that little demon Ian isn't
here to lead him into mischief."

At this point that little demon Ian, who had
been standing, perdu, in the doorway, with-
drew again unnoticed.

He had not gone right into the room when
he discovered it was in possession of the
enemy. The dearest friend was always the
enemy to the two small boys ; they spoke
of her as " The Silly Rabbit " between them-
selves, both of them sternly disapproving of
the way she laughed, the high heels upon
which she tottered, and the millinery she
affected !

Ian had merely stood contemptuously
absorbing the soldier-cap on her head and
looking occasionally, with wistfulness, at
Barbara's glorioush- loose gold hair.

But at the reference to himself he withdrew
hastil}-, much stung.

However, he knew now, without asking,
where to find Con.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND.

"No important vices and no inclination to commit
robbery on a large scale." — MARK TWAIN.

/^ON was laboriously pasting away, per-
fectly happy.

He had forgotten that he was uselessly
clad in his grey suit, grey stockings with
the tops turned down with red, and his
Allies' tie, even though he had had enough
scolding to make him remember the fact,
having been caught by his father at the
telephone, lightly attired in his pyjamas, what
time he inquired of Ian the requisite details
for the costume of the day.

He had forgotten this fact ; he had forgotten,
too, the unbearable curiosity from which he
had suffered about his friend's references to
slippery floors and the cleaning of them.

83

84 JOHN OF DAUNT.

He had even mercifully forgotten that the
Doctor was coming to see him, and would,
without a doubt, stick a silver spoon down his
throat and give him that throttling, choking
sensation he so intolerably dreaded.

He had even forgotten that his head felt
heavy and his hands hot, and that he had to
keep his mouth open and his tongue well to
one side, to breathe with any comfort at all.

The tears on his face were almost smeared
dry, almost obliterated with paste.

He was intensely happy.

Amy and Ida also collected stamps and
had the most elaborate albums and a most
stupendous knowledge of geography. They
talked in low, weighty tones to each other as
they sorted and stuck in — they used gummed-
paper hinges for their albums, despising
paste ; they talked of pfenniges and francs,
and centimos, and reis and pesos ; they spoke
familiarly of the Lombard- Venetian states,
and Shanghai, of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of
Zanzibar and the Seychelles, and whether
stamps of these places should go under the
headings of the Niger Coast, Oil Rivers, or be

OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND. 85

placed on the South African page. They
sometimes spent an entire hour trying to
settle between themselves just upon which
one of the hundreds of little squares in their
albums one of the hundreds of stamps in their
possession should go.

Con, however, held steadily on to his own
system, although he took interest in theirs,
and, when they settled down to their albums,
generally stood by to be ready to receive any
stamps that they were discarding.

He intensely liked his own system.

He kept ladies on one page — queens or
symbolic figures, it was all one to him —
kings and dukes and chiefs on another. One
he gave up to steamships, one to trains — the
exuberance of the United States of America
in this respect gave him great pleasure. On
another — perhaps the best loved of all — he
kept his birds and his animals. The giraffe,
eating the palm-tree of Nyassa, the galloping
camel of the Soudan, the half-cent Newfound-
land dog and two-cent swimming fish, the
Siberian elephant, even his own country's
past issue of kangaroo and emu afforded

86 JOHN OF DAUNT.

him passionate delight. To have squandered
them here, there, and everywhere in his album
would have been inconceivable to him.

This morning Barbara had almost over-
flooded his heart with happiness by presenting
him with some stamps that had just come to
her " from the war."

" I enclose some Egyptian and Algerian
stamps," one of her faithful warrior friends
had written to her from the Dardanelles.
" I remember how that little beggar Con used
to be always coming into your drawing-room
hounding at me to look at his album when I
wished him anywhere in the world but in your
drawing-room."

" That little beggar Con " was pasting them
in at the present moment as if they were
holy things, with the watermark of the
archangels Michael and Gabriel distinct upon
them.

Into him rushed Ian, Ian, grey-suited, grey-
stockinged, and gird about the neck with an
Allies' tie.

Con fell off his chair, he knocked the cup of
liquid paste over with his arm \ the horrid

OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND. 87

stuff went all over the " stamps from the war ";
he did not care a button.

" Hullo," he said.

" Hullo," said Ian.

There was a great matter to be told, a
matter of immensest importance ; it had to
be told to its uttermost detail and yet with
not one superfluous word. Do little boys in
moments like this simply rub noses and make
the thing accomplished ?

It is easier for us to trace over the ground
of the great matter, the matter of immensest
importance, and leave the method of the
communication of it to Con, imagined.

At half-past ten Mr. Schwarz had come,
Mr. Heinrich Friedrich Schwarz, one time a
citizen of the unspeakable Fatherland, now
naturalised inhabitant of civilised Australia
and a martyr to indigestion— " And serve
him jolly well right," Daisy would have
concluded.

Mr. Schwarz had come and had been
through the usual routine of patients. He
had stood on the mat and rung the bell ; he
had been ushered into the hall by Daisy

88 JOHN OF DAUNT.

and had put his large umbrella in the umbrella-
stand, hung his large overcoat on the hall-
stand and carried his large felt hat with
him into the waiting-room firmly upon
his head.

The presence of ladies there did not
serve to remove it ; he had indigestion, and
no one with indigestion could be expected to
observe the amenities of life ; besides, they
were only Australians.

He turned over the pages of journals lying
on the table, The Town and Country Journal,
The Bulletin, The Sydney Mail, He closed
them bitterly. He had an album at home in
which he pasted, carefully, as Con did postage
stamps, all the cartoons and insulting remarks
he came across about the Kaiser ; the collec-
tion would be valuable when " Der Tag "
arrived. But this morning even that zest
failed him, so profound was his indigestion.

Then he was beckoned by Daisy to go to the
consulting-room — not in his proper turn-
Daisy had carefully attended to that, as he
had noticed with silent fury — and to the
consulting-room he went with sulky dignity.

OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND. 89

We have finished with Mr. Heinrich Fried-
rich Schwarz.

' Ian ! ' said Daisy, going down to the
basement and through the back door and out
into the yard, where the boy was prowling
about his father's car that a mechanic had
just brought back cleaned and ready from
the big garage not far away. " Ian ! where
are you ? " She called him Master Ian in
the presence of his parents or visitors.

' What ? " said Ian, alert instantly at the
excitement in her voice.

" Come and look what that brute of a
German has had the impudence to bring with
him and tie to our railings," said Daisy.

Ian shot himself into the house again and
to the kitchen window that commanded the
view of the railings.

Tied to it, and with a preposterously long
tongue hanging loosely out, was a dachshund
of the most pronounced type.

Its body seemed a yard, at least, in
length, and looked like a live, distorted
cylinder supported on ridiculously inade-
quate and crooked legs. Its pendulous ears

90 JOHN OF DAUNT.

drooped down to its shoulders, hiding its
keen, intelligent eyes.

It was the first time in his life that Ian had
seen this breed of dog ; there have to be
first times with everything.

He gazed at it in utter silence.

" Yes," said Daisy, " you may well look.
That's the kind of dog Germings keep."

" It iss a ferry gut dog indeed," said Gertrud
warmly. " Look at its tail, ach, it iss a
beaudiful dog, Master Ian — you mustn't listen
to her."

But Ian did listen, and greedily.

' That dog," said Daisy, " ought to be
shot and poisoned and interned. Don't know
what the police are thinking of to let them be
taken walking in the same street as human
beings. Look at its tail, Gertrud says. Yes,
look at it ; it's wagging, isn't it ? "

It was wagging. No one could deny the
fact.

" Do you know why it's wagging ? " said
Daisy, addressing herself to Ian.

Ian had the orthodox theories as to the
reasonf dogs wagged their tails, but so

OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND. 91

awful was Daisy's tone, he did not venture
to mention them.

Instead he said "Why?" in a subdued
tone.

' That dog's tail's wagging because it knows
about the sinking of the big ship," said Daisy ;
" it's just standing there gloating."

Now this was serious, deeply serious. Ian
breathed hard and his colour went and came.

' Fiddle-de-doodle," said Gertrud, and
thought she had so fine and expressive an
English idiom in the phrase that she
continued washing up with an unruffled
demeanour.

' That dog," said Daisy, " do you know
the only thing it will eat ? Liver of geese torn
out alive. I'm not having you."

;< Torn out alive ! " repeated Ian, more and
more stunned.

" It's as true as death. Ask any one. They
call it patty de foo. I've read all about it,"
said Daisy. " Do you think he'd look at the
good chop Gertrud throwed him ? He just
turned his lip over and sneered. I seed
him."

92 JOHN OF DAUNT.

It was absolutely true ; a perfectly good
chop lay untouched at the hound's feet.

lan's chest rose and fell.

" Tied on to our railings ! " continued Daisy ;
" and when he unties it and takes it along
again d'you know what he teaches it to do ?"

" No," muttered Ian, pale and prepared
for anything.

" To bite little girls' legs who only wear
socks," said Daisy.

Ian clenched and unclenched his hands.
Dee was in socks still.

His mother came into the kitchen to give
some orders, Dee at her heels.

" Yes'm — I thought it was the Doctor's
bell, m'm," said Daisy. " I was just going,
only Master Ian 'ere he stopped me." She
plunged at the basement stairs.

" Mother," said Ian in a voice that he just
kept free from its intense emotion, " look at
that dog."

" Um," said his mother. ' You might egg
and breadcrumb the cutlets, Gertrud, and be
sure to serve sliced lemon with them."

" Tied to our railings, Mother ! " said Ian

OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND. 93

' Yes, darling, I suppose he thought it
would run away if he' didn't," said Mrs.
Daunt. " And what about the puddings,
Gertrud ? "

" Mother," said Ian desperately, " have
you looked at it ? It — it isn't just a plain
dog."

The tone of voice caught the mother's
attention a moment. She really looked at
the dog.

' Well, I think it is— a very plain dog," she
said, laughing. " I never did like them."

' What's ze matter wif the doggie," Dee
inquired, peering out at it. " Poor old doggie,
untie him up, Inie."

' I think Ian considers its legs are too
short," said Mrs. Daunt.

Dee examined the animal critically.

" Zey reach yite down to the gwound, Inie,"
she said.

" Mother," said Ian, " that dog. Mother-
look here. That dog, Mother—

"Darling," said Mrs. Daunt, "don't in-
terrupt me. Gertrud is waiting for the orders,
and everything is behind-hand. I have to

94 JOHN OF DAUNT.

go out in half an hour, and there are a thousand
things to do."

Ian interrupted no more. He stood stock
still in the window, gazing at the dog.

And this was the matter, the matter of
immensest importance, that as soon as ever
might be, he rushed to tell Con.

Con was in possession now of the whole
thing to its minutest detail ; so graphic was
the communication that the boy could have
drawn you the animal almost to scale ; its legs,
its tail, the length and the frightful crooked-
ness of its round body, its hanging ears ; he
would even not have left out from the picture
the chop lying sneered at on the ground. He
could have written, if any one had lent a
hand with the spelling, a breathless and
heart-stirring account of the unspeakable
habits and customs of the beast.

That Ian proposed at once to rid the earth
of the offender followed as a matter of course.

That Ian also proposed to enlist his own
aid in the matter was also a matter of course.

Con stood glowing, gazing at his friend
admiringly and expectantly, but quite silent.

OF CON AND THE DACHSHUND. 95

The bolder brain was planning the execution
of the matter ; it was his part to stand by
and follow.

" Come on," said Ian at last, " we must
start. Your Mother's door's shut, so that's all
right. The Silly Rabbit's in the dining-room,
so that's all right ; the door's nearly shut, and
we can slip past. No one else is about, they're
washing up. I looked. Come on."

Con came on.

" H'sh," said Barbara once, " I'm sure
that's Con coughing."

' Well," said the dear friend impatiently,
:< you don't have to go every time he coughs,
do you ? "

" No, of course not," said Barbara, " I

only thought " She went back willingly

enough to the fascination of patterns of
crepe de chine.

Out in the street, well round the corner,
consideration came to considerate little Con.

" I say, Jo," he said nervousty, " we're
forgetting my froat, aren't we ? " He touched
the flannel bandage apologetically.

Ian bent his eyes upon him critically a

96 JOHN OF DAUNT.

whole moment. He considered him from
head to foot.

" Take it off," he said as a result of the
thought, " then no one will be able to tell."

Con hesitated one second.

"Oh, shake it up, Bill," Ian said im-
patiently.

Con obediently unwound the bandage and
stuffed it into his pocket.

No convulsion of nature happened ; not
even the face of the sun was darkened.

There were two small boys, of about an age
and nearly a size, walking along a busy street,
blind to the busy street. They had their
heads a little lowered and conversed earnestly.

Two small boys walking together and talking
very low. Is there a commoner sight in all
the world ?

' ' A pennyworth of poison, please,' Ian said politely."
John of Daunt] [Chapter IX

CHAPTER IX.

A PENNYWORTH OF POISON, PLEASE.

it is not to be imagined that the
matter is going to be as simple as it
may seem at this particular point.

The dog was not any longer tied to the
railings of No. 7, Trafalgar Terrace, and Ian
was uncomfortably aware of this fact. While
he had rushed upstairs from the kitchen
and his callous mother, and had gone plunging
about the different rooms, thought too hot
to find anything at all to do, the dog had
been quietly taken away.

Still, the affair now only needed the greater
skill and daring.

The first thing was to find out where the
animal lived, and moved and had its being,
in the intervals between biting little girls'
legs and being tied to railings.

97 s

98 JOHN OF DAUNT.

A little meditative kicking at the kerbstone
precipitated thought. Ian plunged into the
Post Office, followed by the faithful Con.

He took off his cap to the postmaster in his
best manner.

" Will you tell me where Mr. Schwarz the
German lives, please ? " he asked.

The postmaster knew and respected warmly
the Doctor's only son. He got the directory
down himself and ran the name down into
the " S " columns and then, no difficult
matter, into the " Sch " division.

" There's two of them," he said, " Hans
Augustus Schwarz and Heinrich Friedrich
Schwarz. Which do you want, sonnie ? "

This was rather a blow. Daisy had men-
tioned no Christian names.

" He's got a dog," said Ian after a moment's
searching of the question as to whether he was
in any way betraying himself.

" With short legs," supplemented Con
eagerly, " and its body is "

Ian trod on his foot so heavily that he
became silent at once.

" Dogs are pretty common belongings,"

" A PENNYWORTH OF POISON, PLEASE." 99

smiled the postmaster. "I've got a dog
myself."

" Give me both their addresses," Ian said
after mature deliberation, and the kindly
postmaster wrote :< ' Drachenfels/ Wattle
Street," and " ' Ehrenbreitenstein,' Park
Avenue," down on a slip of paper.

The boys went on their way again.

At the chemist's Ian stopped and began
his low whispering to Con again. You would
have imagined them two nice little boys
wondering over the green and red fluid in the
great bottles.

" We've got to poison him first," Ian told
his lieutenant.

" Right O ! " said Con cheerfully.

They went into the shop.

" A pennyworth of poison, please," Ian
said politely.

" Of what variety, sir ? " replied the
chemist's assistant, also politely.

" Very deadly," said Ian, deeply in earnest,
and pondering heavily whether a pennyworth
would be sufficient or whether he should have
ordered two pennyworth.

ioo JOHN OF DAUNT.

The assistant searched his face just one
second, but decided that it was far too young
and chubby and innocent for any mischief.

" What's it for ? " he asked. " Rats ? "

Ian nearly thanked him for the kind
assistance. " We've got an awful lot," he
said. " They even eat the potatoes."

" Whose boy are you ? "

" Dr. Daunt's."

" Oh, well, that's all right, of course. You'd
better have ' Rough on Rats.' But it's six-
pence, sonnie, we don't sell pennyworths."

This was another blow ; still, it had to be
met with fortitude. Ian disbursed half of the
shilling with which Mr. Middleton had pre-
sented him, and received the package. But
the thought gnawed, " What if it would only
poison rats and not distorted German dogs ? "

The chemist's assistant, however, seemed
there expressly to forward his plans.

" Mind you don't leave any of it lying about
where your dog or cat can get it," he said,
" or there won't be any dog or cat."

' Thank you very much," said Ian, beaming
at him and hurrying away.

" A PENNYWORTH OF POISON, PLEASE." 101

It seemed an endless business.

They stopped at a grocer's, and the whisper-
ing outside the shop-window began again.
You would have thought them two nice little
boys longing for the raisins and dates in the
window.

' When he's poisoned, Bill," said Ian,
" we've got to drown him. We shall want a
potato bag to carry his body in."

" Right O ! " said Con cheerily. " They're
sure to sell them here."

Empty potato bags were not as cheap
as one might have thought, remembering how
worthless they look lying in the yard after the
potatoes have been removed from them.

The grocer estimated the value of one at
sixpence, which was clearly impossible, seeing
eightpence was the entire capital left, and there
were other demands to be satisfied.

Ian protested hotly.

" Sixpence ! For a dirty old bag ! Come
off ! " he said. " You ought to be glad to give
them away."

' That so ? " said the grocer, who had the
honour of his customer's acquaintance. " I

102 JOHN OF DAUNT.

don't know my business, it's clear. I only
give them away for sixpence."

" Tuppence," said Ian. " I'll go to
tuppence, but no more."

" Sixpence," said the grocer.

" Tuppence," said Ian. It seemed like a
deadlock.

" TeU you," said Ian, " I'll fight you for it."

He had fought the grocer before this in their
own backyard when he was delivering goods,
the rules of the combat being that the grocer
fought with one of his hands and arms and Ian
with two. The boy plainly had an urgent
need for the bag, and the grocer had been a
boy himself when twopence was twopence.

" Done," he said. " Twopence down now,
and fourpence more when I knock you out on
Saturday. We'll get Miss Daisy to umpire
for us."'

So now the confederates had a potato bag,
a box of poison, and a capital of sixpence.

But the next step was one that furrowed
lan's young brow with care.

How in the world did one obtain the liver
of a goose torn out alive ?

" A PENNYWORTH OF POISON, PLEASE." 103

It were useless to think of offering the pro-
posed victim deadly poison neat. It must
be prepared with a skilful hand and placed
upon something the victim had a partiality
for, in a similar way that Gertrud used
toasted cheese when she was trying to reduce
the number of rats.

The liver of a goose must be obtained
without delay.

Ian bethought himself of his friend, little
Field, the butcher's son, and in a few minutes
the two of them were hovering among the hang-
ing carcases of John James Field, " Family
Butcher and Small Goods Delivered Daily."

Ian did not want five pounds of silverside
of the round, or a scrag end of mutton or even
sixpennyworth of sausages after the manner of
most small boys who entered the establish-
ment. He merely wanted Jimmie.

The butcher recognised, as did every one in
the suburb, the well-known Damon and
Pythias, and was glad that Jimmie should be
wanted by them. He sent his son to an
expensive school for the express purpose of
providing him with nice friends.

io4 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" Jimmie ! " he shouted.

But as Jimmie did not appear, and as a
respected customer did, he pointed the way
to the back yard and said benignly that
Jimmie was sure to be somewhere about the
sheds.

The boys went in search of him.

Now Jimmie heartily disliked butchery,
but had a passion for horses. The reason he
was in the yard was that the great meat-cart
had just been backed into it and the great
horses that knew him so well were being fed.

" Hullo," said Ian.

" 'Ullo," said Con.

" 'Lo," responded Jimmie, heartily glad
to see them. He came forward and did his
duties as host very creditably. He gave the
name and pedigree and age of the horses, the
distance they covered from the market every
day ; he pointed out the white star on the
forehead of one and the white fore-foot of the
other.

But Ian was plainly not listening, and was
roaming about restlessly.

Jimmie was forced to various details of his

" A PENNYWORTH OF POISON, PLEASE." 105

trade ; yes, blood from the cart was run
away down this drain ; yes, refuse meat was
put into those bins ; yes, that heap of stuff
in the cart was liver.

" Goose's liver ? " asked Ian thirstily.

" Oh, no, just calves' ! We don't have
poultry."

Ian took him a little aside for the next
question ; he did not like it too well himself,
but the urgency of his affair demanded it.

' Were the calves ever alive when—

Jimmie looked quite upset himself, and
explained the quick despatch of animals at the
killing yards. Then he broke off a moment.

" What's the matter with Con ? " he said.

Damon glanced at Pythias.

" He's sick," he said in disgust. " He
doesn't like blood and things. Get him a glass
of water."

Jimmie ran for one and succoured Con with
much kindness, but Con looked past him very
apologetically to Ian.

" I'm all right, Jo," he protested with a
white little smile, " don't go without me, Jo."

They set off again, leaving Jim quite at a

106 JOHN OF DAUNT.

loss to account for their sudden visit. He
had suggested, even begged, to accompany
them wherever it was they were bound, but
Ian had steadily refused him.

He did not -know that his schoolfellow
had been sorely tempted to say yes and bid
Con run home, just as a general about to
attack a position, might discard a weak
lieutenant in favour of one he knew well to be
stronger and of infinitely more use.

But Con was Con, twined in with all the
warm fibres of his being.

" Come on, you silly ass," he said, and
started off again, Con, watery about the eyes,
blue and white about the face, shaky about the
legs, following happily behind.

The desired article was obtained, and was
in a parcel in lan's bursting pockets. A
delicatessen shop suddenly offering itself as
they went along, Ian had bethought himself
of asking his question at the counter ; he
knew it was a " Germing " shop, since he had
often been in it with Gertrud or Daisy.

" The liver of a goose ? " It was plainly
no roc's egg here ; the woman produced an

" A PENNYWORTH OF POISON, PLEASE." 107

article from a dish in a most everyday
fashion.

' You'd better go and wait outside," Ian
advised his friend, and Con retired thankfully.

Ian leaned over the counter and spoke in a
low voice.

' Torn out alive, please," he said quietly
but firmly.

But the woman had not much English ;
the weights and measures, and English money,
ham, Frankfurt sausage, pickled cucumber,
veal and ham pies, and so on, comprised her
vocabulary, and her husband was absent.
She merely shook her head, wrapped the little
parcel up, and said " Sheekspence, dank you."

So they went on their way again, their
preparations finished. Ian would have liked
more assurance on his last point ; he did not
like to contemplate the beast " sneering " at
what he was about to offer it. Still, one could
not have everything.

They went on their way again, their pre-
parations finished.

CHAPTER X.

THE DARK DOING.

XlfATTLE STREET and Park Avenue lay
at opposite ends of the suburb, as
Ian discovered when he attacked this part
of the question. He decided to try Wattle
Street first, and he went up and down
long streets, Con keeping up as well as might
be expected, seeing that his feet were still in
their grey felt bedroom slippers, which fell off
tiresomely at the heels.

" Drachenfels " was a stout, prosperous-
looking house with an ornamental stone wall
enclosing its front garden.

" Cellars under those walls," said Ian,
" chock-full of bombs and things. Police took
them away. See that tower place — that's
where they sit to spy on our transports."
Daisy's facility of invention was contagious.

108

THE DARK DOING. 109

Con looked properly impressed.

But there was no short-legged dog to be
seen in the garden ; there were merely two
pleasant-looking girls playing tennis.

' They keep it in the back yard, of course,"
said Ian, and led the way down the nearest
side street.

He clambered up on the fence to make a
survey of the situation, and found Fate playing
into his very hands. The kennel stood in the
yard not five feet from the identical spot
upon which he was perched.

He hung over the fence, head downwards,
lower and lower. Con had to hold on to his
heels to keep him from going over altogether ;
then he returned from his investigations. He
had been able to see into the kennel through
a crack, and the dog was within, assuredly
within.

And now the dark work was done in the
security of the deserted back lane. The
morsel from the delicatessen shop was un-
wrapped and with Con's birthday-knife was
heavily spread over with the deadly poison.

Nothing remained but to place the bait at

no JOHN OF DAUNT.

the kennel door, await the instantaneous
death, put the body in the bag and make off
with it.

The yard was absolutely deserted, though
part of the tennis-court ran along the side of it,
and a circumspective eye had to be kept upon
the two players.

Ian swarmed up his fence again and
stealthily lowered himself down the other side,
keeping behind the bushes as much as possible;
No Australian at the Dardanelles ever crept
towards the Turks with a higher, faster-
beating heart.

He crouched behind the kennel, and then
with a very, very careful hand reached forward
and laid the bait at the door of it ; the dog's
paw came out instantly and dragged it in.
The deed was done.

The next second a clamour arose as if the
gates of Bedlam had been suddenly opened.

The two girls from the tennis court came
flying wildly to the rescue, racquets in hand.

" He's savage. Don't you touch that dog —
come away, quick," they shouted, seeing a
small boy engaged in what appeared to be

THE DARK DOING. in

mortal combat with their dog. " Run, run,
he's on a chain, he can't come after you."

But the small boy made no effort to run ;
he seemed to be trying to get something out of
the kennel, and the dog was fighting him for
it. They were both tangled up with the chain.
There seemed moments when they were both
locked in each other's embrace. The wild,
white face of another little boy sometimes
appeared at the top of the fence and some-
times fell away ; he seemed to be trying hard
to get over and failing every time.

One girl hit the dog heavy blows with her
racquet — the other dragged Ian away, but
not before he had a messy-looking piece of
substance safely in his hand.

" Wrong d-d-d-dog," he stuttered in ex-
planation, and looked to where an innocent,
if savage, brown retriever was glaring at him
from a safe distance.

Not even was it the > dwelling of a Hun.
Hans Gustav Schwarz had sailed for
Germany as soon as the war broke out, and
" Drachenfels " had just become inhabited
by staunch Australians who had a new

H2 JOHN OF DAUNT.

name, " The Gunyah," ready to replace the
hateful-looking " Drachenfels," as soon as a
carpenter could be found to bring a ladder
and take it down.

But this Ian did not know ; he merely stood
there panting as fiercely as the dog itself.
He hardly knew yet that he was hurti

" D-D-D-didn't get even a 1-1-lick," he said ;
" isn't pup-pup-poisoned a b-bit."

The girl who was not engaged in subduing
the dog had time to let her eyes see what an
unusually nice little boy this was who stood
before her — such wildly excited eyes, such
glowing cheeks, such a chubby, real
" mother's " boy. She quite wanted to hug
him, while she found out what had been
happening. Then horror came into her eyes.

" Oh, his hand — oh, the wretch bit him.
You poor darling ! Oh, look at his hand."

And now Ian, and Con on the fence, and the
elder girl, who was keeping the dog crouched
down by the mere force of her threateningly
uplifted racquet, looked at lan's left hand
and found it torn and bleeding.

" Now, don't be silly, Edith," commanded

THE DARK DOING. 113

the elder girl. ' Take him into the house
quickly and bathe it, and be putting boracic
on till I come. There's no one at home but
us, remember. I've got to fix this chain ;
it's nearly off the ring. I'll come in a few
minutes. Do it like we learned at the First
Aid class. Go with this girl, little boy,
quickly."

But the little boy was standing very still.
Two waves had washed over him. The first
was one of passionate desire that Barbara
could see how he was bleeding ; the second one
of passionate longing for his mother's arms.

But a third came, and washed away all
trace of the other two ; he must escape to
safety — this was a German house, and he
was in their yard trying to poison their dog ;
he must escape and reach home without an
instant's delay.

Before the girls realised what was happening
he was swarming back over the fence, dropping
down the other side, saying in a hoarse voice,
" Run, Bill, d'ye hear, run !"

By the time the younger girl had flown

to the back gate and opened it, there were just

H

H4 JOHN OF DAUNT.

the heels of two little boys vanishing out of
sight.

" Run," said Ian.

They ran down a street and up a street
bumping into people and into lamp-posts,
terror at their heels.

" Here's a tram — they can't catch us in a
tram," gasped Ian, still the general. " I've got
twopence. Quick ! "

"It's started," said Con, hanging back in
terror.

" Come on, jump on, quick, quick!" Ian
leaped at the tram himself, felt Con stumble,
put out a hand and dragged at him — dragged
him up the step, sank with him in a heap,
quite safely, on the platform.

The tram was quite upset. More than one
mother who had trembled for them came and
began to scold energetically, more than one
man said this sort of thing would have to be
stopped, and demanded that the guard get
the names of the young rascals and sheet the
crime home to them and their neglectful
parents.

Only one man took it calmly. When he

THE DARK DOING. 115

had ascertained that no damage was done he
picked up his paper again.

" It's the way we took Gabe Tepeh after
all," he said, and paid no more attention to
the event.

The white-faced little boy started to
minister to the one who was warmer-coloured
though also somewhat pale ; he took a
flannel bandage out of his pocket and tried to
wind it round his friend's bleeding hand, and
now the hubbub among the ladies became
more pronounced ; all of them wanted to
help at the same moment. Such a perfect
darling of a boy !

But a policeman, who was also a traveller
in the car, took charge of matters at this
point.

" I know him," he said. " Let him alone.
His old man will soon fix him up, he's a
doctor. I'll see them both home."

The boys resigned themselves luxuriously
to his care — even leaned against him, their
heads comfortably against his arm when
he came and sat between them for the rest of
the journey.

CHAPTER XL

SURGERY.

." A man of pleasure is a man of pains."

Young's Night Thoughts.

everything was going along ad-
mirably, admirably.

The Doctor was at home, the place where
a doctor far too seldom is, when an accident
befalls one of his own family.

Mrs. Daunt was out, the place where all
mothers ought to be, for their own peace of
mind, at all events, when their little sons are
bleeding.

She was hunting that little son all up and
down the suburb, but not in an unbearably
agitated state of mind. Her anxiety was
mainly vicarious.

There was no doubt about it Con ought
not to be out in the open air, and the agitation

116

SURGERY. 117

in the Middleton household was a thing to be
realised with much sympathy and contrition.

For there was also no doubt about it, Con
would not have been out in the open air had
it not been for John of Daunt. Mrs. Daunt
recognised guiltily, when she was carried
tragically up by Barbara to Con's room to
witness its absolute emptiness, that, left to
himself, that small boy would still be pains-
takingly pasting in his postage stamps, or at
the most have passed on to the harmless
occupation of sorting his cigarette cards.

So she was covering the ground of the west
side of the suburb with a long, even-swinging
step, a tall and youthful-looking figure in a
cherry-coloured sports coat, hastily donned,
and a little black velvet hat from beneath the
shadow of which her eyes shot eagle glances
down back lanes and around tram sheds and
motor garages and such likely haunts.

.Both the Middleton maids were similarly
employed about the eastern streets of the
suburbs, while the long, light, agitated plaits
of Amy and Ida, dragged away from basketball
to help meet the situation, whisked in and

n8 JOHN OF DAUNT.

out of shops and the houses of friends in a
perfectly distracting fashion.

Even Effie and Noela, strung up by the
happenings to the point of looking positively
almost excited, were stationed, one at the
front door and one at the back, in a position
to command at least all the terrace.

Even the " Silly Rabbit " had given up her
shopping expedition and had gone, high heels,
forage cap and all, to search the nearest piece
of bushland.

But Barbara herself, weighed to the ground
with her sense of heavy guilt in the matter of
patterns of crepe de chine, was forced to stay
in the house and confine her feverish activities
to the task of keeping her mother in total
ignorance of the happening. However, the
strain of the position was at last relieved.

Noela came bursting up to her where she
hovered on the staircase.

" A pup-pup-pleeceman's got him," she
stuttered, quite excited at last, yes, un-
doubtedly quite excited. To sedate little
maidens of eight who never had moved and
never could move one hair's-breadth from the

SURGERY. 119

bounds prescribed by law, a policeman — at
close quarters — is an agonising apparition.

Barbara went to the door, her knees almost
giving under her ; visions of Con's limp form,
drowned, burned, run over, danced before
her, as her nerveless fingers fumbled with the
catch of the door. And there he stood beside
the " Arm of the Law " positively jaunty-
looking. Grey suit— perhaps a little the
worse for wear — grey stockings — they would
need some darning — Allies' tie, twisted a bit
crooked possibly ; flannel bandage gone alto-
gether ; grey bedroom slippers — no, slipper ;
he had lost one when he boarded that moving
tram.

" Hullo, Barbie !" he said heartily in lan's
best manner, the one reserved by that young
gentleman for the critical moment when his
escapades were sheeted home and had to be
squarely faced.

The policeman was very pleasant. The
Doctor had given him half a sovereign for the
recovery of his son, and there was no reason to
suppose that the son still in hand was held
less cheaply by his family, even though merely

120 JOHN OF DAUNT.

as a specimen of a son he might not be so fine
and engaging.

" Good morning, miss," said the policeman
very pleasantly. " He's quite safe and sound,
you see, even if he hasn't himself to blame
for being so. And the other young chap,
safe and sound too, or next door to it. The
Doctor sent you this letter."

Barbara tore it open.

" DEAR Miss BARBARA," wrote the
Doctor, — " Herewith your young scoundrel ;
I've looked him over, and he doesn't seem
any the worse for his jaunt. Contrariwise.
However, you might as well give him a hot
tub and get him to bed, and I'll come round
and see him again as soon as I've wiped the
blood off my young scoundrel ! "

" Oh," said the girl, immensely relieved,
and smiled joyously at the policeman, and
even at Con. " I don't think he's hurt after
all, constable."

" Not his fault that he isn't," repeated the
policeman — his meaning now quite evident.
Barbara lacked intensely nervous. One tipped

SURGERY. 121

policemen, of course ; indeed, they were made
for it, undoubtedly, but then, again, how
much did one tip them ? Certainly not
sixpence or a shilling, as one did on a station
with a porter who relieved one of a suit-case.
What was it that had passed that day so
swiftly from her father's hand to the con-
stable who had once brought Mrs. Middleton
home in a cab, having found her half-fainting
at the tram terminus ?

Oh, one could not stand weighing things in
joyous moments such as these ! She took
the housekeeping purse from the bag that
hung from her waist, and recklessly took a
sovereign into her fingers.

Then she became nervous again. One was
generally sideways on with a porter when one
tipped him, and his hand occurred naturally,
but this constable was facing her, and Con and
Noela and Erne were all eagerly looking on.

She grew so pink that the policeman became
sorry for her.

' Well, good morning," he said, and turned
— sideways on.

Yes, all was going along admirably.

122 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Ian was sitting in readiness in his father's
consulting-room, and his father was moving
about and opening now this little drawer and
now that.

The throbbing place would smart in a
minute or two, doubtless, that boracic stuff
always did, but then his father never hurt him
much, and it would be rather nice to be
bandaged comfortably up. Perhaps he would
have his arm in a sling like the boy at school,
and then he would go up to Con's, and Barbara
would see him and perhaps feel sorry that she
had spoken of him as a little demon to the
"Silly Rabbit."

He surveyed the blood-stained flannel
bandage with much interest. He would take
it to school with him when he went back and
show it to the boys. Unless he did so that
boy Ralph would say that he himself had bled
more when he cut his wrist with his new knife.

There had not been much conversation yet
between himself and his father, and very few
questions had been asked — yet — but they
were on the best of terms, Ian knew ; his
father had called him " Old Man " and " Old

SURGERY. 123

Chap " and had rubbed the back of his head
in the friendliest fashion, after he had looked
at the bitten place.

" Where was the brute, eh ? " said Dr.
Daunt, moving about.

" Oh, it wasn't a brute, Dad," Ian replied
earnestly. " Ever such a nice brown dog,
it was ; not German a bit, Daddie."

' Then what made it go and bite you, eh ? "
inquired his father.

" It didn't like being saved from eating
poison," replied John of Daunt.

" And where was it, if I may ask — this dog
that acts like a German and yet isn't one ? "

" Chained up in a yard, Daddie. You
ought to have seen how the girl made him lie
down with her racquet. Oh, he was such a
nice dog, Daddie ! Only a bit savage."

" But I don't see, even now, old man, how
a chained-up dog in some one's yard, a bit
savage, even if very nice, got at you . Where
were you ? "

' It was when I happened to be in their
yard, Daddie," the boy began patiently.

And then the telephone bell rang and Daisy

124 JOHN OF DAUNT.

came in and things began to go less admirably
at once.

" Miss Middleton at the 'phone, sir," she
said. " Says she won't keep you a minute."

" Just a jiffy, old chap," said the Doctor,
and strode into the hall.

Daisy went across to Ian and tried to kiss
him, real tears in her eyes at the sight of the
red discarded flannel and the piece of reddened
bandage put on temporarily after the first
examination.

The boy fought manfully away from her
arms. " Stop slobbering, Daisy, for goodness'
sake," he said.

" Oh," said Daisy, fairly wringing her hands,
" I says to Gertrud, I sez, he's nearly bleeding
to death, I sez, but I didn't know it was as bad
as this. My goodness. I never saw you look so
white — oh, you won't faint, will you, ducky?"

Ian began to look a little alarmed for himself ;
there certainly was a good deal of blood on the
flannel — perhaps hejeally was in a serious way.

" Oh, tell Daisy the Doctor doesn't think
it was a mad dog, or she'll go mad herself
with worry," the woman said hysterically.

SURGERY. 125

Here was another point that had not yet
occurred to Ian. Yes, now he came to think of
it, he had heard stories from the boys at school
about the bite of mad dogs. Jimmie Field had
certainly held the opinion that in Australia
dogs kept their sanity whatever the season, but
there was no knowing what a lick of poison
might do to the brain of an otherwise sound dog.

Ian looked at Daisy with his lips suddenly
drooped right down. " Isn't Mother home
yet, Daisy ? " he faltered.

" No," said Daisy, " and well for her she
isn't. What she'd do while he stitches you
I daren't think. I feel all turned myself."

" Stitches me ! " said Ian, his eyes dilating.
" I'm not going to be stitched — I'm only going
to be bandaged up or sticking plaster."

" No," said Daisy mournfully, and wiped
her eyes, " I heard him telling the lady in the
waiting-room that she'd have to wait a bit
longer, 'cause his little boy had got hurt and
he had to put some stitches in. Now don't be
frightened, ducky ! Shall Daisy stay in and
hold your hand ? It'll half kill her, but she'll
do it willin' if you say the word."

126 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Stitches 1

At the telephone, Barbara, gravity in her
tone as if the weight of nations was on her
shoulders, was engaging the Doctor.

" After I've given him a very hot bath,
Doctor, shall I put hot bottles to his feet ? "

" If he permits it."

" And shall I rub his chest with turpen-
tine ? "

" Again, if he permits it, Miss Barbara. It
won't do him any harm."

" Oh, Doctor ! I thought it would do such
a lot of good."

"So it will. So it will. To Miss Barbara
at least. Rub half her worry away. Now
I'll have to ring off ; I've got a job on hand."

And so he had.

" Here, where are you going, John, my
Giant-Killer ? " he cried as his son suddenly
shot himself through the consulting-room
door and down the hall. " Don't go away,
old son. I'm ready for you now."

But lan's grey legs disappeared round the
first bend in the staircase.

The Doctor followed him two steps at a

SURGERY. 127

time. It was essential that there should be as
little movement of the hand and wrist as
possible. Ian fled before him.

" Ian ! " said the Doctor amazed, " did
you hear me ? Stop. What are you doing —
what do you mean ? "

The boy flew into the large bedroom and
dodged three times round the big bed — darted
out on the balcony and looked for a minute
as if he would dash over the rail into the
street ; bolted inside again by the drawing-
room door, rushed behind the piano, saw it
was useless as a refuge and rushed out again ;
dodged between his father's outstretched
arms, escaped once more, rushed up the
final flight of stairs and into the maids' room.
Here he stood at bay a minute, realising that
the end had come ; a most abject little boy,
with round, piteous eyes and panting chest and
quivering lips ; no sight at all for any father
to face who had so wretched a task before him.

" Ian ! "

But the quiet voice utterly failed in its
usual effect. The boy had discovered just one
place of refuge was left, and he made for it.

128 JOHN OF DAUNT.

He crawled rapidly under the bed and had
to be drawn out by one vigorously resisting
leg — a leg that had so haughtily caparisoned
itself only a few hours before in a grey stocking
" turned down with red."

He lost control of himself altogether now ;
he kicked, he howled for his mother, he
implored and clung.

The wildest ten minutes ensued ; he found
that his father was a terrible man, harder
than iron ; he would have no clinging any
more than he would have kicking.

He learned a heart-chilling fact all in a
moment — that men and boys must meet pain
when it comes along absolutely without flinch-
ing and without a sound.

" But not stitches ! " he said incredulously.

A wave of the new required courage was
by this washing into him, and he was articu-
late again, even if disbelieving.

" Certainly, stitches," said his father with
much decision.

" Not even say o-o-o-oh ! " said the appalled
child.

" Not even o-o-o-oh," said his father i

" ' It was when I happened to be in their yard, Daddie,' the boy
began patiently."

John of Daunt] [Chapter XI

SURGERY. 129

" You just hold on to the arm of the chair
with your other hand, and you put your teeth
together hard like a wounded soldier does.
Now we're going down at once."

They went down side by side — not even
hand in hand, iron father and iron boy.

The horrid work was done, the horrid,
horrid work.

The little boy got up from the chair, a new
respect for himself as well as a huge self-pity
swelling his heart.

But he felt shy and estranged from his
father ; he did not know this hard, stern man
who had been dealing with him. He tried to
slink out of the room, for out in the hall he
heard, at last, at last, his mother's voice.

And then he found himself suddenly
gathered up in the big arms. He looked up
and saw, most terrible thing of all, a tear in
the eye of the hard, stern man.

" Little old son ! "

" Daddie ! "

' There. Now you can go to Mother for a
cuddle, as you're only eight."

" Oh, you darling old Daddie ! "

CHAPTER XII.

THEOLOGICAL.

•' Yet sometimes, when the secret cup

Of still and serious thought went round,
It seemed as if he drank it up,
He felt with spirit so profound."

WORDSWORTH.

A MOST exquisite peace lay over every-
thing.

The shops across the road were asleep
in it, and the people walking to and fro
were just the gentle figures in a dream.

The trams moved up and down no less
happily and sweetly than the little birds
that kept coming on to the telephone wires.

Some smoke from a factory far beyond the
roofs of the shops had become detached and
hung suspended in the air in unbelievably
beautiful shapes.

Ian lay in his balcony bunk, exquisitely
alone.

130

THEOLOGICAL. 131

He was not quite undressed and given up to
illness like the time when he had had measles ;
he had his stockings on — the grey ones still —
and the pair of real long cricketing trousers
that his grandmother had just given him
replaced the grey knickerbockers which had
had some ugly stains on them ; but the top
half of him wore a clean pink pyjama coat
that still had the nice calm smell of the
laundry basket of the week's clean clothes.
His face felt very clean, too, and his hands.
He smelt the latter occasionally from time to
time with a luxurious languor. Perhaps if he
were always washed with that delicately
scented soap of his mother's he would always
feel holy as he did at present.

His Mother — his heart was swollen with
love for her. To lie in her arms as he had done
for a few minutes had made him feel he never
wanted to be any older — wanted to be always
a very little boy able to cry when he liked
and bury his head in her soft breast.

But he was glad when she smoothed the
quilt over him and finished doing things for
him and went away.

132 JOHN OF DAUNT.

His heart was swollen with love for Dee, too,
when she kept climbing up the ladder to him
and with reckless love presenting him with
thing after thing of her most cherished
possessions. She even gave him Boodle. He
felt almost like crying, she was such a tiny
little thing and so fat and sweet.

But he was glad when he heard his mother
taking her away and whispering to her that
dear Ian must be kept quiet for a little time.

It was exquisite to be left absolutely alone,
all but for Boodle — Boodle did not count.
He just sat at the foot of the bunk with his
head cocked a little to the side and that
faithful, understanding look in the one eye
that remained to him.

The factory cloud caught the boy's gently
straying attention again. He realised that
it was a made cloud and not a heavenly one,
but it was really very well done — nearly as
well done as God's clouds. After all, was God
as clever as people made out ? Those bubbles,
for instance, that Dee had blown yesterday
and that had hung in the sunshine a second
before they floated out over the tram-line—

THEOLOGICAL. 133

He had not made them ; they had been made
by Dee, who was nothing but a fat little girl
aged three and a quarter, and yet none of the
rainbows that He hung across the sky were
really more beautiful. And if a factory could
make, without really trying, a cloud like that,
well, if it made a business of it and had to do
fresh ones every day of the year as God had to,
who could say how soon it would not catch
God up ? It would find sunsets and sunrises
hard to do, doubtless. God did these really
splendidly, but then, of course, He could get
hold of all the colours and as much of them
as ever He wanted. He, Ian, had felt, only
yesterday, that he could paint a sunset quite
as beautiful as a real one, in his drawing-
book, only the lemon- yellow cake in his paint-
box was dried up and the orange chrome had
to be used very sparingly, as there would be
.no chance of a new box until his grandmother
gave him one on his birthday.

But God had no worries like that ; never
had to wait to do things till a grandmother
gave Him what He wanted. Had God a
grandmother ? Every one had one — yes, both

134 JOHN OF DAUNT.

his father and mother, questioned on this
point, were unanimous ; every one had a
grandmother, though she was sometimes dead.
But God's grandmother ! How white her
hair must be, what a terrible glitter there
must be on her glasses — how awful must be
her frown !

The little boy slipped uncomfortably away
from any further thought of her ; he went
back to sunsets. Now if he, Ian, were God,
he would make sunsets and sunrises to last
all day, and not just the little time they did ;
it would be such an easy way of making the
world beautiful all the time. Why, the water
in the gutter across the way and the pools
on the tram-line were exquisite things at
five o'clock in the morning and at tea-time
at night, but all the day between they were
as ugly as possible.

Birds and flowers ! Yes, He was very good
at making things like those, but could He
make a locomotive ? The boy remembered
that he had demanded an answer to this
question only yesterday of his mother, but she
had only answered uncertainly ; it was very

THEOLOGICAL. 135

baffling and vexatious altogether, the un-
certain way in which grown-up people an-
swered when you asked them questions about
God. They professed intimate knowledge
about Him on many points ; they knew
exactly the things He liked you to do and the
things that made Him angry. Why, Daisy
even told Dee that when she was naughty and
refused to have her bib on, it made Him angry !
And yet when you asked them something
you really wanted to know about Him they
gave you stupid answers.

" Could God make a loc' motive, Mother ? "
he had demanded.

" Of course He could, my dear," his mother
had answered. " Don't you think the hand
that makes mountains and seas could make
anything it liked ? "

This was no answer. Anyone could make
mountains and seas if they had enough
material. Why, on the beach he, Ian, himself
made mountain ranges and valleys and rivers
and inland seas that were no whit inferior to
real ones, only smaller. God had no worries
over not being able to carry enough sand to

136 JOHN OF DAUNT.

a certain place, and over having to be dragged
away to catch the tram home when He was
in the middle of making a mountain. But a
locomotive !

Last week he had been travelling in a train
with his family, and owing to a block in the
lines, they had been delayed nearly an hour
at a station. And Dee and his mother had
remained patiently in the carriage, as was
meet and right the womenfolk of families
should do, but he and his father had stridden
out to see to things at the end of the platform.

It was a strong bond, ever deepening, to
find that his father loved and was interested
in machinery as much as he himself. This
particular day, with so much time to spare
and such an eager face at his elbow, the
Doctor explained some of the miracles of
steam and of engines. He did more ; he
made friends with the engine-driver, and got
an invitation into the cab, and let the boy
touch and release the lever of the throttle
valve that let the steam into the cylinders
to put the engine in motion. The reverent
little hand touched the wheel that operated

THEOLOGICAL. 137

the link motion which sent the engine ahead
or backward, touched the handbrakes and
the control of the Westinghouse brake. To
think that a touch on that tiny thing could
bring a huge, throbbing, tearing train to a
standstill !

The shining eyes, the quivering interest,
made the engine-driver remember that he
had once been a little boy of eight himself,
when engines were infinitely more marvellous
to him than any marvels of an alleged fairy-
land. He took the boy down on to the lines,
and, hotly assured by him that his suit did
not matter a scrap, even down into the blow-
pit. From there he had the unforgettable
experience of looking up into the cylinders,
and at the piston rods, the connecting rods,
and those amazing things, the twin eccentrics,
that the quadrant of the link motion started
into action or made motionless.

" Could God make a loc'motive, Mother ? "
was the result days later, and the mother's
answer failed completely of satisfaction.

" Well, why doesn't He, then ? "

Mrs. Daunt was busy with the month's bills

138 JOHN OF DAUNT.

and her cheque-book, and this was at least the
nineteenth question on widely diverse subjects
from her son in the space of an hour. Still,
she made an attempt to answer. She said
that she thought He left that sort of thing
for the cleverness of man to do, and made the
great things of nature Himself.

" Birds and flowers and clouds and things ? "
said Ian discontentedly.

" Y-yes."

" Well, I think making steam-engines would
be a lot usefuller, Mother. If I were God I'd
make one that would fly along a thousand
miles an hour and not want lines and never
collision or explode or anything. Oh, why
doesn't He ? "

Mrs. Daunt added the butcher, baker and
eggman together and subtracted the ice-man,
who had already been paid. Then she tried
earnestly to explain Omnipotence.

But because she took rather a long time
Ian fidgetted from one leg to the other ; he
believed in questions being answered in half

a dozen illuminating words. " Yes, but "

he kept saying, " yes, Mother, but—

THEOLOGICAL. 139

He would not even allow her that flowers
and insects were extraordinarily wonderful
things to have made.

' Why, that pansy in your best hat,
Mummie, is ever so much bigger and beauti-
fuller colours than one of God's. And the
beetle thing on Daisy's hat — its wings are
much wonderfuller than any real beetles,
and you can move them, too. She's going to
give it to me when it's worn out."

''' But they're not alive, little son ; real
flowers and real beetles are breathing and
moving and thinking in their way, just as
much as we are. The works in steam-engines
are just like child's play compared with the
wonderful works in a flower."

He was switched off on new lines, at all
events.

" Mother, what do beetles think about ? "

But as he lay to-day considering God after
the manner of small boys who meditate Him
infinitely more than the grown-ups dream,
he recollected the unsatisfactoriness of his
mother's replies about Deity and the steam-
engine.

140 JOHN OF DAUNT.

He was compelled to draw his own deduc-
tions. The reason that God did not make
steam-engines Himself was that He of course
had no steel and iron and things up there.
But He must often long to be making them.

The factory cloud dissolved ; there was
that fly still buzzing on the window-pane.

Since Daisy had charge of the housemaid
duties, and Gertrud was kept out of sight in
the basement, cobwebs very often formed
on the sliding-glass windows of the verandah.
Both Dee and Ian preferred Daisy's minis-
trations in this respect, for they had a passion
for cobwebs.

There was one now, opposite to lan's bunk,
spun across the extreme left-hand top corner
of a large sheet of glass. Within it sat, very
still, very, very still, a grey-black spider. The
fly that buzzed was not like the ordinary fly
that buzzes ; it was slenderer in body, had
lighter wings, longer and lighter feet ; it was
about the size of a March fly. Ian had given
it some of his attention ever since he had been
told to lie down in his bunk this morning
and keep quiet.

THEOLOGICAL. 141

There was all the glass on the verandah for it
to buzz upon ; there was all the space of the
particular sheet that it was on — the left-hand
bottom corner, the right-hand top" corner,
the right-hand bottom corner, and the entire
space of the middle. What possessed it that
it should choose all the time the left-hand
top corner where, sat so still, so very still, the
grey-black figure that meant death to it ?

It went so close once or twice that the still
figure moved, ran down to the edge of its web,
but then — you almost felt you could hear it
laugh victoriously — the fly flew to the middle
of the pane and buzzed tantalisingly. They
had been doing this ceaselessly for hours, it
seemed to Ian ; all the time that he had been
lying there, in fact, yet the spider never
wearied of its watching, and the reckless fly
still gaily played with its fate and defied the
stronghold.

Once the fly buzzed with a new sound within
its buzz — a sort of whirr, and lan's attention
was freshly arrested.

' You silly ass !" he shouted breathlessly,
sitting up in his excitement. For it had gone

142 JOHN OF DAUNT.

close once too often, and the still figure had
come nearer to the edge of the web, where a
thread of almost invisible net had at last
entangled the feet of the prey. And now the
spider was furiously active ; it fastened a
thread to a point hard by and began to run
round and round its victim in circles of
decreasing radius, winding it a little more
safely with each circle.

" Serves you right, you jolly ass," said Ian.

But the time was not yet come ; the lines
broke, off flew the fly — so glad of the release
that it circled about the bunk and even sat
on the nose of the rocking-horse. The active
grey-black figure retired to the corner of her
web, grew still again, began to wait again.

And with all the street in which it might
have exercised itself, with all the housetops
and telephone wires on which it might have
perched, that fly came back, after ten minutes
or so, and began its buzzings on the identical
pane and near the identical left-hand top
corner again;

Ian fell to sleep, wearied of the struggle ;
he thought once of interfering himself by

THEOLOGICAL. 143

throwing his pillow at the glass, but then he
decided that it would not be fair to the spider,
and left it to them to fight it out.

When he woke there were two figures in
the web ; the grey-black one comfortably,
though no longer alertly, still again ; the fly
packed neatly in a corner with legs and wings
trussed with gossamer silk closely to its
motionless, slender body.

" Oh, Mother, why are flies such donkeys ? "
was his waking question, and he sighed im-
patiently because his mother was not ready
instantly with an answer packed into six
illuminating words.

CHAPTER XIII.
BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT.

" A Robin Redbreast in a cage,
Puts all Heaven in a rage."

WILLIAM BLAKE.

TT was the birthday of the mother of
Mrs. Daunt, which, however, did not
make any one even Dee, attempt to refer
to it as " Granny's birthday."

Dr. Daunt spoke of the event as " your
mother's birthday." Dee called it " Bluebell's
happy turns," and wanted to know how old
she was.

But that was just the point ; it was how old
she was not that counted.

When " Dinky " insisted upon marrying at
twenty, which was just the age at which she
herself had insisted upon marrying Dinky's

father, it made a grandmother of her in her

144

BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT. 145

very early forties, and there seemed nowhere
to lay the crying blame.

But when that lusty young man, Ian, found
his tongue and began to call to her in the
street or in shops, " Granny, Granny," she
flatly refused the publicity of a position that
excited so much comment.

There was a picture in one of the child's
books of a girl named Bluebell, and because
this girl was painted in a blue-flowered dress,
and " Grannie " sometimes wore a blue-
flowered dress, he pointed at it and cried
" Grannie ! " So it was not difficult to effect
a transfer of name.

At fifty she was still "Bluebell," and
though now she had five grandchildren in her
unwilling quiver, she had never properly
settled down to the post. She was still as
slender and tall as Dinky herself, whom, of
course, she never called by the Doctor's
absurd little name of Dinky, but just Helen,
as she had had her christened.

She was infinitely more engrossed in the
cut of her tailored suits and the rest of her

plumage than was Helen. Indeed, she was

K

146 JOHN OF DAUNT.

grown really out of touch with that Helen
because the latter in her narrow terrace house,
and with her narrow means, could devote so
little time to the engrossing subject of dress.

But in her second daughter, Diana, she had
some one absolutely bone of her bone and flesh
of her flesh in all matters that mattered.

Diana was one of those people one feels one
ought to speak of with bated breath ; she
never made a mistake. She never bought
the wrong hat to the right frock, the wrong
cushion to the right chair, never even ordered
the wrong soup with an otherwise right dinner.

When it came to her marrying, it never
occurred to her to do as her elder sister Helen
had done, rush off and be married to an im-
pecunious young man for the totally in-
adequate reason that she was in love with him.
She surveyed her suitors with deliberation in
her lovely eyes, and finally chose, not the
poorest, even though he was good to look
upon, and not the richest, because he certainly
was not good to look upon and was beyond the
years she considered correct. But she chose
one with a sufficiently spacious, income and a

BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT. 147

sufficiency of good looks and expectations
and unimpeachable connections.

It was not to be expected that between
herself and " Dinky," who went blundering
along through married life just as she had done
through her impetuous girlhood, there could
exist any deep wells of understanding and
liking, but they visited each other frequently
and talked with interest about their children
and servants and furniture, as sisters do.

Helen was on her way to Diana's this very
afternoon, for " Bluebell " had chosen to
make her home in Diana's spacious and well-
ordered household since the death of her
husband, and it was Bluebell's birthday.

They were going in the well-worn car that
the Doctor could ill spare for the afternoon,
but that lan's wounded hand, and more
especially lan's birthday present for Bluebell,
rendered absolutely necessary.

Mrs. Daunt leaned back when they were
fairly started and surveyed her family with
trouble on her brow.

She was going to a household where all the
appointments were beyond praise and beyond

148 JOHN OF DAUNT.

reproach, one in which to-day's birthday
celebration would have its own etiquette and
delicate observances, and she was conscious
that she did not strike the right note herself.

She had intended to manage things for the
event so beautifully, and now, after a tumultu-
ous morning of hunting a lost son through the
suburb, and helping to wash him free from
blood, and seeing that he had an undisturbed
sleep and a tempting little lunch, it was two
o'clock, and there was no time for anything
but to precipitate themselves and the presents
into the car that was waiting. When you do
not possess a chauffeur of your own and have
to pay so much an hour for the services of one
from the garage you never keep him waiting
very long.

But the children's presents ! Mrs. Daunt
surveyed them with a worried glance.

Ian had chosen a savage-looking galah
parrot and had it in a huge galvanised wire
cage. Dee had a Teddy bear of brown plush
of the very species and family as " Boodle,"
but smaller ; also she had two coloured
balloons.

BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT. ; 149

Now, when it was Mrs. Daunt's own birthday
or that of the Doctor, nothing seemed sweeter
to either of them than that the children's
gifts should be things entirely of their own
choosing and redolent of their own personali-
ties. They would have no coercion, not even
a suggestion from a grown-up on the matter.

And presents chosen by the same method for
" Grandpa and Grannie Daunt," the Doctor's
parents, were always deeply appreciated by
the recipients.

But Dinky was beginning to have some
doubts whether it must be permitted to obtain
any longer with Bluebell.

She had no trouble in divining what the
gifts of Diana's children — three sedate little
girls — would be. They would be the very
latest things from the Arts and Crafts' Society :
a handwoven basket filled with sweet lavender,
doubtless, and an address book in grey suede
leather, with a stencilled kookaburra on it,
and a beaten-brass tray to hold pens. And
they would be each wrapped up in the most
appropriate way, the lavender, without a
doubt, tied up in mauve tissue-paper with

150 JOHN OF DAUNT

purple ribbon and bearing a dainty card with
" To " and " From " and " with loving greet-
ings " already machine printed on it and
just the words " BluebeU " and " Hilda " in
childish writing.

Dinky had a hankering after these nice
little observances herself ; they appealed to
some artistic spot in her that never got fair
play.

But how could one tie a squawking, miser-
able parrot and its clumsy cage up in pale
mauve tissue paper with purple ribbons ?

How could one find a chaste brown box in
which to enshrine a brown Teddy-bear for
presentation ?

Dee had even flatly refused to keep her gift
in the tissue-paper in which it had been
wrapped at the shop, saying that the paper
made the " poor ring too hot." And she had
pulled one of its eyes off to make it more
exactly like to Boodle for dear Bluebell.

The parrot had plucked its own feathers out
in sheer viciousness till it had really a hideous
appearance ; and it squawked incessantly.

And yet, and yet

BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT. 151

Bluebell, invited by Ian one day to " come
on out in the bush and watch me shoot my
catapult — not hit the birds, of course, only
make them jump a bit," had shaken her head
and refused.

" Don't you like going in the bush,
Bluebell ? "

Oh, yes, Bluebell liked the bush well
enough.

" Don't you like watching the birds ? "

Oh, yes, Bluebell liked birds very much,
but she was growing too old, perhaps, to run
about and scramble like a little boy. She had
no notion of the wave of hot pity and love
for her that washed over her grandson at her
words ; he merely stood fidgetting in front of
her with his catapult, his little bullet head
bent over it, and he shot away, shouting at
the top of his voice the next second.

But when the question of her birthday came
up he had not a doubt what he was going to
buy. Since Bluebell could not go to the birds
because she was no longer able to joyously
scramble as he did himself, a bird should come
to live with her and make her happy.

152 JOHN OF DAUNT.

He went down to the birdshop with his
mother, simply bursting with benevolence.
He had the entire contents of his money-
box with him, five shillings and tenpence-
halfpenny. He had been saving hard for the
little engine that was in the toyshop window,
but he would not even leave the tenpence-
halfpenny behind when he went yesterday
to the birdshop ; he was subject to bouts of
recklessness like this.

A complex conflict seized his soul, however,
the moment he was inside the crowded shop,
where a wallaby, a paddymelon, an opossum,
some kittens and puppies added to the strange
unsavoury scent of fur and feathers and feed
that he sniffed with enjoyment whatever his
mother did.

There was a galah parrot in the window
that he had had a brooding eye upon for a
month or more, it looked so bitterly unhappy.
No one attempted to buy it, its tweaked out
feathers too entirely spoiled its appearance.
No other parrots were put in its cage to keep
it company. The boy even suspected that
it got less than its share of food, and that

BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT. 153

its water was often left unchanged. He had
often stood at the window wishing wildly that
he had money enough to buy all the birds
and let them go, but he used to realise sadly
that the ways of the grown-up world were too
much for him.

Actually inside the shop, however, with
his mother, the thought came flashing that
here was a chance of happiness for the wretched
little creature. He had money enough for
once, not, alas ! to set it free, since a bird of
some kind must be bought for Bluebell, but to
change its surroundings.

His mother was drawing his attention to
redheads, green parroquets, blue-wings,

" I want the pink and grey galah out of the
window," he said steadily.

Even the bird-man tried to dissuade him ;
it was out of condition, he said, better have
something else. What about a pair of
redheads ?

" I want the pink and grey galah out of the
window," said Ian.

" Look here, Sonny," said the man, " here's
a Blue Mountain parrot I'll do you at three-

154 JOHN OF DAUNT.

and-sixpence — tame as a kitten ; that's a
bad-tempered little cuss in the window."

" So would you be if your cage wasn't big
enough and they didn't give you clean water
every day," said Ian hotly.

" Eh, what's that ? " said the man. " You're
a funny little chap, aren't you ? What about
a canary, then — I could do him a canary,
ma'am, at seven-and-sixpence, if you'd go
that far. It's got a black feather or two, to be
sure, but that's no great drawback."

A red wave rose into the face of John of
Daunt.

" I want the pink and grey galah out of the
window," he said. " Quick, please."

Mrs. Daunt had never regarded her children
as so many pieces of clay upon which she
must mould her own image ; here was some
vital problem at work within her son's breast ;
she stood aside.

" Let him have it," she said. " How much
is it ? "

The man produced it, looked at it, shrugged
his shoulders.

" Say two bob," he said. His sense of

BLUEBELL'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT. 155

honesty was unimpeachable, even if he had
not imagination enough to enter into the soul-
conflict of a small boy.

' What about a cage ? " said his mother,
and thoughtlessly approached a pretty little
green affair that had a gilded perch. She
had really no experience whatever of birds,
beyond a canary she had once kept.

" Mother ! ' said Ian in an explosive
burst.

" Don't you like it ? " she said innocently.

The boy made an effort to control himself.

" It's even smaller than the one he's been
keeping it shut up in," he said, and glanced
bitterly at the man. He stalked to a huge
affair built for a cockatoo.

" It could get a bit of a fly round in this,"
he said. " I'll have this."

And he had it, despite discouragement.

Its price was five shillings, but that did
not deter him.

"It is one and a penny-halfpenny more
than you have, dear," said his mother, who
had to keep him from the insidious vice of
generosity at her own expense.

156 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Ian deliberated — gave the result of his
deliberation.

" Advance my next sixpence," he said.
" And Con can have my Allies' tie for six-
pence ; his is all bust up."

' That makes a shilling of it," said his
mother, keeping her face as straight and
earnest as his own.

" Black the grate for Daisy, a penny. Do
the knives, a ha'penny, that does it," said her
son. " We'll take it, Man."

They took it.

In fact, there it was in the car on its way
to Bluebell now, every doubt in the boy's
mind set at rest. It was not handsome, he
knew, but kindness would soon make the
feathers grow again. Bluebell would under-
stand. When she saw how miserable it had
been she would love it and be glad that he
had not taken one of the prettier ones.

He could hardly wait for the car to draw
up at his aunt's splendid house to leap out
and rush in, cage in hand.

Shut up, you silly ass, no one's going to hurt you.' "
John of Daunt} [Chapter XIV

CHAPTER XIV.

HIGH HARMONY.

"^NIANA had been having her drawing-room
redecorated in the very latest of styles.
The walls were white, the pictures on
them being monotones in grey, framed in
black. The carpet was black. The chairs were
upholstered in chintz of a black background
blurred over with a design in greys and whites.
Black curtains, with a band of white, hung
at the windows ; black silk cushions were
piled on the sofa. A tall black vase held a
great clump of faintly pink stocks. A squat
black vase that stood on a white table was
filled with violets so deeply purple they were
almost black.

Nothing disturbed the high harmony. Blue-
bell was in black velvet sitting silhouetted
against the white wall as if placed there by

157

158 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Whistler himself. Diana was in trailing white,
sitting on a black sofa ; the three little girls
were in white muslin with sashes of the precise
faint pink tint of the stocks.

Into this symphony burst Ian, Ian attired
in a pair of crumpled cricketing trousers and a
coat that had one sleeve dangling empty over an
ami that was in a sling. By his right hand he
dragged the great cage, scattering bird seed and
drops of water from it all over the new carpet.

But the glow on his face ! The shining of
his eyes ! The eagerness of his tongue that
had so much to say it kept tripping him up
and making him stumble.

" Here you are, Bluebell, you'll get to like
it awfully soon, they'll grow again fast as
anything now it's in a big cage. Mind you
change its water every day yourself ; don't let
that silly young Hilda do it. You do like it,
don't you ? Redheads go and die, and you
soon get sick of parroquets. Notice its eyes ;
when it's not angry they look at you ever so
nicely. Hasn't it got nice claws ? When you
teach it to talk it won't make that noise. Shut
up, you silly ass, no one's going to hurt you."

HIGH HARMONY. 159

The uproar was deafening. Out of it emerged
the soft little voice of " that silly young
Hilda."

" I don't think it's very good for the new
carpet, Mamma ; look at the water ? "

Diana was constrained to interfere, for her
nephew by now was trying to force the cage
on to the delicate sofa.

" Run and tell Emma, quickly, Hilda ; tell
her to bring a cloth and a handbrush," she
said. " No, Ian, not up there. Yes, yes, it's
a very nice present, but take it out quickly,
please, into the yard."

Ian fell back a pace. Bluebell had her hand
to her ears, and was certainly shrinking from the
cage. Calm Aunt Diana was manifestly upset.

He looked round and saw the changed aspect
of the room that had been a blush of rose
colour, carpets, curtains, cushions and all
when he was last in it;

His jaw dropped ; awe came into his eyes.

" Who's dead ? " he said in a loud whisper.

" You will be, in another moment," said
his mother and wiped her eyes. She never
could keep laughter in when it really would

160 JOHN OF DAUNT.

out, and though she was genuinely distressed
at such a rough breaking up of harmonies, she
could not help finding it funny too. Also
there was a grip at her heart ; she had suffered
so much herself as a child from checks like
this on her impetuosity, and now she tasted
lan's suffering.

" I'm awfully sorry, Di. Little boys never
stop to think, you know. No, you don't
know." Her eyes swept the three pink
sashes. " He thought mother would like it,
and, he was in such a hurry to. give it. You
must forgive him. I hope the damage isn't
very great."

" Rub it very dry, Emma," said Diana.
" Black shows every mark on it. He is eight,
isn't he, Helen ? Isn't it time you began to
teach him to think ? I say it entirely for his
own sake."

"Ian," said his mother gently, " now that
you have given it to Bluebell, will you take
it out in the yard or on the verandah ? — it will
be happier there."

" But Bluebell can't see it then," objected
Ian. " 'Sides, it would catch a cold out there

HIGH HARMONY. 161

after living in that stuffy shop. I'll put it
in the window, Bluebell, then it can see the
sun. Move those silly old plants away, please,
Auntie Di."

He started to drag the cage across to the
vast bay window. But Diana took charge
definitely of matters now.

'* Take the bird out in the yard at once,
Emma," she said. " Give it into Smith's care,
he will look after it. Sit down quietly, Ian.
Hilda, get Ian some cake and a plate. What's
he been doing to his arm, Helen ? "

The bird was borne away. Ian sat down,
overcome. Aunt Diana could always reduce
him to speechlessness sooner than any one
else. He sat and stared at the great slice of
passion fruit cream cake that Hilda had
given him with a subtle smile. " There is
something in the misfortunes of our best
friends that is not actually displeasing to us,"
said the subtle smile.

Bluebell was talking to him now. She
was far too gentle and well-bred a person to
hurt any one's feelings, much less those of
a loved grandson.

JOHN OF DAUNT.

" Thank you very much, darling," she said ;
" it was very kind indeed of you to get it for
my birthday. I think it is a beautiful bird,
and we shall soon be great friends."

But lan's blue eyes looked right into the
middle of her fading blue ones. It was not a
beautiful bird ; he knew it and she knew it.
Why did Bluebell say untrue things like this ?
But then, yes, he often had heard her say
untrue things like this, he remembered. He
filled his mouth violently full of cake to ease
the choking at his heart. It made him catch
his breath and splutter and cough ; he found
Aunt Diana and all three pink sashes looking
steadily at him.

" Run out on the verandah, dear," suggested
his mother hastily.

He bolted.

Now it might reasonably have been ex-
pected that Dee at least would do her mother
credit on this auspicious occasion. She was
ordinarily a most engaging little mortal, with
naturally sweet manners and very loving
little ways. And she was a beautiful little
thing ; she had the rich colouring of her

- HIGH HARMONY. 163

parents, the warm cheek glow of Ian. And
she was still clean, Mrs. Daunt observed with
intense relief ; her little muslin frock was
hardly crumpled, her socks were beyond
reproach — she had nobly refrained all the
way from rubbing the soles of her shoes
alternately upon them ; her hair hung sweetly
curling below her demure little muslin bonnet ;
she had even been kind enough not to lick
the dusty glass screen in the car and transfer
the result to her cheeks. When the mael-
strom produced by Ian had subsided her
mother pushed her gently forward.

" Go and give Bluebell your present,
darling," she said.

But Dee hung back.

" Come and wish me happy turns, little
Dee," said Bluebell, holding out her arms.

But Dee stood stock still.

" Dee," said her mother in a firm whisper
in her ear, " go to Bluebell at once."

Dee knew what obedience was ; her father
at least had been her teacher.

She sighed heavily and went.

" You can have zese," she said, and

164 JOHN OF DAUNT.

presented the two balloons. The red one was
shrunken to half its size ; the green had
caught in something as she got out of the car
and had collapsed into a bit of elastic skin
in her hand.

"It's broked," she said, " but you can suck
up little 'loons and tie 'em wif cotting. Like
zis."

She demonstrated by sucking up a piece of
the green skin and triumphantly closing the
opening with her tiny finger and thumb.

" Get some cotting, girls," she said peremp-
torily to the pink sashes.

" There might be arsenic in that green
stuff — I wouldn't let her put it to her mouth,"
said Diana. " I never let my children buy
those things."

Dinky hastily went to the rescue and washed
out her daughter's mouth with a clean hand-
kerchief and some hot water from the tea-
tray. She threw the bit of green skin into
the slop-basin.

Dee at once threatened tears. " I hasn't
got any uvver happy turns present now for
Bluebell," she said, with drooping mouth.

HIGH HARMONY. 165

" But you haven't given her the Teddy-
bear yet," said her mother, and added, sotto
wee : " You'll understand the funny present,
Mother dear, I know. She chose a Teddy-bear
like her own Boodle one that you gave her,
because she felt there was nothing in the world
anyone could like so well. You'll notice she
has even taken one of its eyes off to make it just
the same."

" Oh, how sweet of her ! " said Bluebell,
really touched. Her heart was glad at the
knowledge that " Boodle," her own gift, was
so dear to the child, and the tribute of one
back seemed a most beautiful thing to her.
f She held her hand out for it. Whether it
harmonised or not, it should hang in her bed-
room for ever. Yes, it should hang over the
looking-glass where she could never fail to
see it.

But Dee was retreating, clinging passion-
ately to the little animal.

" No," she said, " No, no. Boodle wants it.
Poor Boodle has no little Boodle, Mummie. I
take zis sweet little Boodle to poor old Boodle
at our house."

166 JOHN OF DAUNT.

And nothing would move her. She was not
kith and kin to Ian for no purpose. When her
mind was made up, well, it took Dr. Daunt
himself to unmake it.

The attachment to the animal had grown
more passionate, once it was out of its tissue-
paper and denuded of an eye, with every
mile the car went. When it came to the
actual point the sacrifice was altogether too
great to be endured.

" Zat's your present, Bluebell," she an-
nounced, and presented at arm's length the
shrunken red balloon. Then she beat a hasty
retreat across the room and entrenched herself
behind a settee, Boodle the second held in
a deathless grip. Diana covered the situation
by pouring out tea.

They were handsome, upstanding children,
this little couple of her sister's, doubtless
better-looking and healthier than her own
trio. But they were undoubtedly little
savages.

" Sugar, Helen ? " she said with uplifted
tongs. " I think you said you'd given up
giving up sugar, didn't you ? "

HIGH HARMONY. 167

" One lump, please," said Helen steadily.

She had caught her sister's faint, subtle
smile, mother to the smile that had played
round little Hilda's mouth when she did not
know that she was thinking Rochefoucauld.

" And now tell me how the poor darling
hurt his hand, Helen," said Bluebell, to relieve
the tension.

But at this point a pink sash that had
disappeared came dashing back.

" Oh, guess what that bad boy's done now,"
she said. " He went out in the yard, where
Smiff had hung the cage, and he 'liberately
opened the door and let it fly away. I sawed
him myself."

" Saw," corrected Diana.

" Saw," agreed Hilda cheerfully.

Dinky succeeded in making her face as
perfectly expressionless as a face should be at
an afternoon tea-party in a very modern
black drawing-room.

CHAPTER XV.

CHILDREN'S QUARTERS.

"Very spacious was the wigwam." — Hiawatha.

breeze passed over. It was Bluebell's
birthday, and the calm of it must not
be ruffled for many reasons. Every one exer-
cised magnanimity.

Even Ian covered over the savage in him
and came back into the drawing-room and
handed plates of cake with a gentlemanly
demeanour that would have done credit to the
prize pupil at a dancing-class. And Dee,
assured that Boodle the second was not going
to be reft from her, and that a slowly-dwindling
red balloon was exactly what Bluebell had
most wanted, came from behind the settee
and consented to sit upon knees and play
with the pink sashes.

Hilda, the eldest pink sash, was seven, and

168

CHILDREN'S QUARTERS. 169

was a seemingly colourless little thing with a
power of organisation and executive derived
from her mother that was surprising, and that,
given free play, would enable her some day to
overcome the danger to which she was con-
tinually exposed, that of being shaped, body
and soul, by her mother, until she was a
nonentity. But the other sashes, Betty,
five, and Laura, four, would never have even
a chance at individuality, so capable and so
powerful was the combined organisation of
their mother and Hilda.

The excessive cleanliness of the two smaller
ones, of course, annoyed Ian, but he had,
otherwise, no particular objection to them.

Hilda, however, had been antipathetic to
him since they were both babies and used to
be put on the floor together to play. Even
then they had snatched at each other's
india-rubber ducks and gone red in the faces
in their struggles to make the other yield
some particular wooden brick.

There had been some satisfaction, however,
in'warf are with her in early days ; he, could
hit her and pummel her just as hard as she

170 JOHN OF DAUNT.

hit and pummelled him, which is saying a
good deal.

But when she grew to be four and he five,
the eternal and unjust differences in sex
came into play. She was a girl, he "a boy,
and he must not hit her.

" Not even when she hits as hard as any-
thing ! " he said incredulously.

No, there was nothing for it ; differences
must be settled in other ways ; she must not
be hit. It was final.

So there had been less healthy strife
between them for the last three years. He
still persisted passionately in his desire to
make her knuckle under, and whatever seem-
ingly amiable game they all played together,
this desire never left him. He kept her in
moderate fear of him by advantages that
grown-ups had not yet taken from him since
they were in ignorance of them. When she
ran through and scattered his rings of marbles
he twisted her thumbs back until she under-
stood not to do it again, and when she broke
up his patiently amassed standing army he
put a strongly booted foot round her slender

CHILDREN'S QUARTERS. 171

ankle with a sudden twist and brought her
down to her knees.

But she gave him plenty to do to outwit
her. She had a way of defying him with a
flick of an eyelash that no one else could have
seen ; he would have given all he had to
change her sex and stand up to her.

Yet how strong are the conventions of life
even with the youngest and most savage of a
community !

When Bluebell asked him this afternoon
what he would rather have than anything
in the world, he did not answer with
the answer that was in his soul, " A chance
to thump Hilda," he merely sighed and said,
" A machine gun."

" Where do they sell them ? " pursued
Bluebell. " At any toyshop ? "

Ian sighed again. He did not want a toy
one. He wanted a real one that he could hide
in the motor-car till he came to the Turks
or Germans, and then hoist up on the seat
and fire with, and fire with, till the entire force
of the enemy was lying horribly dead before
him.

172 JOHN OF DAUNT

Of course, Bluebell would not give him this
though he knew her to be incredibly wealthy ;
he would have to put up with a toy one, he
realised. Well, after all, it would come in
quite nicely.

" I don't like the tinney sort that goes and
gets broken first time you fire it," he ex-
plained. " Con's got one like that, the Silly
Rabbit gave it to him. But a boy at school's
father gave him a real beauty. Heavy as
anything and fires stones or bits of lead or
anything, and doesn't get smashed a bit."

Bluebell took out a little silver note-book
and made a pencilled memo in it ; she had a
feeling that she had not risen to the occasion
of the parrot as she might have done, and she
was anxious to make amends.

Hilda knew the note-book well, and thought
the chance too good to be missed.

" I know what I want more than anything
in the world," she said plaintively.

" A doll ! " said Ian witheringly.

" Tisn't, then. So there. It's something lots
usefuller than a silly gun to shoot bits of stone."

" Bet it isn't."

CHILDREN'S QUARTERS. 173

" What'll you bet ? "

But Bluebell interfered at this point.
" Hilda," she said, " what did mother say
about you using that expression ? "

" He teaches me," pouted Hilda.

" But you needn't learn, my child."

" Has to copy me," jeered Ian. " Well,
what's this usefuller thing ? "

" A scent squirt. In the bottle there's
scent, eau-de-Cologne or anything ; you just
press the bulb thing and it squirts in the air
so fine you can hardly see it. And the smell !
All over the room. Simply lovely."

Ian considered it a moment. He had seen
one himself and been much impressed by it.
Squirts are irresistible until one has passed
the age of eleven.

" Tell you, Bluebell," he said, " if you give
it to her I'll work it for her ; girls never do
it right."

But Bluebell was no doting grandmother
to whom a request was irresistible ; she shut
the spring of the little silver book with much
decision.

" You have far too many things, Hilda,"

174 JOHN OF DAUNT.

she said ; "I shall give you nothing else
till your birthday."

Ian looked at his foe out of the tail of
his eye.

Upstairs they all went to the " Children's
Quarters," as they were called. It was always
an interesting visit. Visitors used to implore
to be shewn over them. It was one of the
sights of the suburb.

Six rooms and a vast glassed-in balcony
comprised the " quarters." There was a gym-
nasium fitted up with a marvellous medley
of small-sized apparatus for physical culture.
There was a comfortable sitting-room shared
by a French governess, a kindergarten govern-
ess, the Norland nurse and the lady sewing-
maid. No uneducated person, such as Daisy
or Gertrud, was allowed contact with the
three pink sashes. The mere cook and house-
maid and parlourmaid and scullerymaid of
the establishment might have been in another
hemisphere, so remotely apart were they kept
from the children.

Three small individual bedrooms opened out
on to the splendid balcony.

CHILDREN'S QUARTERS. 175

Laura's was all white, with just a drift
of pink rose-petals on the wall-frieze and the
curtains and the white carpet. There was
a tiny white wardrobe and dressing-table and
washstand that she would have grown out of
completely in another year or two, but that
drew exclamations of keen admiration from
all beholders.

Hilda's room had white walls with purple
violets drooping from the frieze. Her bed
and her furnishings all made to fit her years,
were in silver-grey ash ; her tiny white satin
eiderdown had clumps of violets embroidered
upon it. Not one thing in the room clashed ;
she would have been as seriously disturbed
as Diana herself if anyone had brought a blue
vase or a green clock into the room.

Betty's apartment was all in apple-green
and white ; no mere pinks and blues and reds
for any of Diana's children ! But Betty's
taste was evidently painfully slow in deve-
lopment ; she had herself gathered some
orange-coloured zinnias and blue convol-
vulus and recklessly enshrined them on her
dressing-table.

176 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" Oh, Mamma, look what Betty's done,"
cried Hilda, positively shuddering. " It
doesn't match or even go."

And even though her mother, talking to
Helen, took no notice of the remark, such was
Hilda's influence that Betty, looking like
a detected criminal, began to sullenly take
the shrieking flowers from the vase.

"Don't be such a silly goat, Bet," said
Ian, ever on the side of the oppressed when
the oppressor was Hilda, " they look bonser."

" Ian," said Diana sharply, " how often
must I ask you not to use your ugly schoolboy
words before your little cousins ! "

Ian plunged away into the gymnasium to
work off his feelings on the little horizontal
bar.

The schoolroom nursery almost baffled de-
scription ; miniature tables, miniature chairs,
miniature cupboards, miniature blackboards,
met the^eye. Costly and exquisite toys stood
about ; not in untidy profusion but exquisitely
selected and in exquisite order. There was a
perfect little laundry in one corner with water
laid on over enamel tubs ; there was a

CHILDREN'S QUARTERS. 177

miniature kitchen so complete it took the
breath away.

All this for three pasty-faced little girls
under eight, unshared, never dreamed of as
to be shared, with any of the world's empty-
handed little girls !

" Does it make them better than other
children, do you think — all this ? " Helen had
once asked, anxiously, not of Diana, but of
the kindergarten governess.

She was feeling just a breath of jealousy
at the time, remembering her own crowded
balcony that served as day nursery and night
nursery and sewing-room and boot-blacking
apartment. She was wondering for a second
whether her babies, whose only miniature table
had been the machine lid, had been really
defrauded of anything.

" Does it make them kinder to each other,
easier to manage, all this ? " she pursued.

The kindergartener, deeply happy as any
kindergartener would be in absolutely perfect
apparatus, was forced to confess that it
did not seem to make very much difference
after all. They still quarrelled and slapped

M

178 JOHN OF DAUNT.

each other and cried and sulked like
any other little girls, she confessed — which
curiously comforted Helen.

She relieved her feelings to her husband
in one of her characteristic sentences.

" Diana makes an artistic and systematised
orgy of motherhood," she said.

A loud shout, a perfect yell of joy down-
stairs brought every one hastily away from
the children's quarters.

" Here's Uncle John," yelled John of Daunt,
clean mad with joy.

" ' Uncle John,' he said, ' I like her too. But you can have her.
You're going to the war again.' "

John of Daunt]

[Chapter XVI

S

CHAPTER XVI.

BIG JOHN.

O here was some one else come to kiss
Bluebell and wish her many happy
returns.

This was her only son John, a young man
of nineteen who, wounded at Gallipoli, had
returned to the lines too soon and had been
stricken with fever. After weeks in the
hospital at Ghezirah he had been granted
ninety days' leave and sent back with a batch
of sick and wounded for the sea voyage and a
spell of home to complete recovery.

Mother and son kissed twice, and then a
third time, for both of them knew he might
never wish her happy returns again. He was
in khaki once more, and at camp preparing
for his return.

Ian vibrated about him, passionately ad-
179

i8o JOHN OF DAUNT.

miring the way his puttees were adjusted, the
way his trousers bagged above them, his
pockets with buttons on, the stripe on his arm,
the fact that his colours were sewn down on
his sleeve and not left loose, as they were with
the soldiers who had not yet gone.

The boy shot into the hall to have a look
at the well-worn cap, and to finger the heavy
khaki overcoat that was tossed down on a
chair. He rushed back again so that he might
lose no word that his hero was speaking.

The hero rubbed the top of his head in an
understanding fashion two or three times ;
he called him " Littlejohn," and " John of
Daunt," and kept beside him even when Dee
and Betty and Laura and Hilda were all
storming the fortress of him and struggling
to be the closest.

After he had been away with his mother,
quite away in another room, and after he had
chatted with his sisters in a less chaffing way
than was his custom, he fought free of all
four girl worshippers.

" Down you go," he said to them, and
scattered them left and right. " Big John and

BIG JOHN. 181

Littlejohn are going down the garden to have
a cigar in peace from all petticoats."

And such was the swelling of heart of
Littlejohn that he forbore to give even as
much as a glance of triumph at Hilda.

So they went down the garden, down the
garden they went side by side. The long
figure threw Uself down against a grass bank.
The little one did the same.

" Well, and how's Con ? " said Big John.
Anyone could see that the question was no
idle one ; he was genuinely anxious for an
answer.

Ian averred that Con was all right, and
wanted to know whether it was a Turk or a
German Big John had shot first shot of all.

" Really quite well ? Not measles or
whooping cough or a single thing ? "

Oh, no ! Con was all right. Oh, yes, he
had a bit of a froat, but it would soon be all
right again. Did Turks always wear red
trousers and crawl on their stomachs and
shout " Allah " when the Australians
attacked ?

" Are his sisters all right ? "

182 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Oh, yes, his sisters were all right. Why
didn't Sir Ian Hamilton pretend to fall back
and pretend to fall back till he got all the
Turks to the edge of the cliff and then push
them into the sea and then march on to Con-
stantinople ?

" All of his sisters ? Eh ? "

" Yes, all of his sisters, only May had a
tooth nearly coming out."

" May ? That's the taU, eldest sister, isn't
it ? " said Big John, forced to Machiavellian
cunning.

This arrested Little] ohn. " Well, you are a
silly, Uncle John," he said. " May's just one
of the others. Barbara's the eldest sister."
He spoke the name quite reverently.

" Ah, yes, so she is," said Uncle John.
" Well, how is Miss Barbara, then ? "

" I think she's all right," answered Little-
john broodingly. " I saw her this morning,

and " He choked back the bitter fact

that she had referred to him as a little
demon.

" Er — er — how did she look, Ian, old
chap ? " said his uncle ;

BIG JOHN. 183

" She hadn't done her hair up, it was all
hanging down after washing," returned his
nephew slowly.

' Yes — yes ? " said Big John.

" An' it was just like sovereigns," said
Little] ohn, warming to the work, " and she had
a blue sort of thing on with tassels, and
she had blue shoes and she had — oh, you
ought to have seen how nice her teeth looked,
Uncle John."

" Yes," said Uncle John eagerly, " yes, old
chap, go on."

" Uncle John, that jagged bayonet that
Turk stuck into your shoulder, aren't we
ever going to use jagged bayonets too ? And
poison gas and 'splosive bullets and things
like that ; we'll have to, you know. When's
Kitchener going to let us begin ? "

" Er — er — I don't know, old chap. I'll
find out. You were saying — about Miss
Barbara, you know ? "

" Uncle John, when they took you to the
'Gyptian hospital, did they give you cig'rettes
to smoke and toothbrushes ? Me and Con
didn't have any sugar on our things for a

184 JOHN OF DAUNT.

week, and no chocolates, and we had the
money instead, an' we got two packets of
cigarettes and two toothbrushes instead — oh,
we didn't mind a bit, we liked doing it. Did
they get there safely ? On Con's packet there
was a picture of a fish with its mouth open,
and on mine there was a picture of the Queen
Lisbeth warship. It isn't really sunk, is
it ? Daisy says it is, but Daisy's always
saying things happen that don't."

" Yes, yes. But what was Miss Barbara
talking about when you were there this
morning ? "

" Oh, the Silly Rabbit was there too, and
you know how they talk when she's there.
Hats and things. Uncle John, you ought
to have seen the Silly Rabbit's hat. Just
like in the pictures of soldiers, only black
velvet stuff."

" Ian, old chap — you're there a lot, aren't
you ? Every day, you told me. Do you
meet other people there much — other men
—like me ? "

' There aren't any men like you, Uncle
John."

BIG JOHN. 185

" I mean — young men, you know — not old
ones who go to talk to her father — young
men who sit in the drawing-room and listen
to her playing and things like that."

Oh, yes, Ian attested cheerfully to the fact
that the drawing-room at Con's was fre-
quently quite thickly inhabited by young men
who came to show their new uniforms or to
say good-bye.

1 Who goes the most ? Isn't there a fair
sort of chap, named Horlick, there a good
deal ? "

Yes, there was a fair sort of a chap named
Horlick there quite a lot. Nearly every day.
" Me and Con call him ' Malted Milk.' "

"'Malted Milk' ? Why?"

" Horlick ? Don't you see ? Like on the
tins of stuff they gave Dee when she was
a baby."

' Um, yes. He can't help his name,
though ; there's nothing wrong with his
name. And you think Miss Barbara likes
him to come so often ? "

" Of course. Uncle John, I wish you weren't
going back yet. Why don't you make some

186 JOHN OF DAUNT.

of the others go instead till you get quite
strong ? S'pose your wounded place burst
out bleeding again when you are going up a
precipice. Daisy says—

" Look here, old man. Never mind Daisy.
Daisy be hanged ! What makes you think
Miss Barbara likes him to be there so much ? "

" Oh, I don't know. She says nice things
to him, and gives him afternoon teas. Daisy
says the Germans are even letting germs loose
up at your camp here, you know, like Daddie
cures. Are they, Uncle John ? "

Big John threw his cigar away, sat up, flung
himself unreservedly on the mercy of his
nephew.

" Littlejohn," he said, " I'm going to tell
you something because you're such a good old
chap, and I know you'll keep it to yourself."

Littlejohn looked quite moved. An uncle
wounded at the Dardanelles to be telling him
a secret !

" My honour. As a gentleman," he said,
with intense emotion.

" It's like this, old man. Uncle John has —
well, he — that is to say — well, in fact Uncle

BIG JOHN. 187

John lo — liked Miss Barbara very much
indeed, but she — well, she didn't seem as if
she liked him, and he, well, you see, he thought
he might get knocked over and it wouldn't
be right for him to say anything to her before
he went. And now he's come back he's only
seen her once, and she seemed as if she'd
forgotten him. And he has heard that she
likes this other chap, Horlick, and lets him
go to the house. And now Uncle John's
going back again to the war next week for
certain — no need to tell Bluebell that just
yet, mind — and he just had the feeling that
he'd like to be quite, quite sure about Barbara
liking Horlick ! And that's why he's asking
your advice, old man."

To think of it ! A man in khaki, a man
with a still red and raw-looking seam zig-
zagged on his shoulder, to be asking advice
of him, Ian, and about Barbara.

His face twitched ; he moved one inch
closer to his uncle.

' Uncle John," he said, " I like her too.
But you can have her. You're going to the
war again."

i88 JOHN OF DAUNT.

A hard, big hand squeezed a hard little one.

" But about Horlick, Littlejohn — if you
tell me she's engaged to him — I thought Con
might have told you — well, of course, there's
an end to things. But if — if I thought she

wasn't so sure after all, well, I'd — I'd .

It would help me a lot if you could tell me
anything. Does she look pleased, for instance,
when he comes in ? "

" Oh, yes — she smiles like anything."

" And what does she say ? "

" Last time she said, ' Well, there's one
man left to come to afternoon tea.' '

" Ah ! " said Big John, pricking up his ears.

" An' she sang songs for him an' he stood by
the piano and turned over."

" Ah ! " said Big John, his face falling.
" What songs, Ian ? Did you notice ? "

If Littlejohn answered, " Remember or
Forget," the song he had once himself made
her sing, he would go back to his war without
one other word, knowing that all was lost.

Yes, Ian had noticed, and more than that,
remembered. Barbara had sung "Off to
the Dardanelles."

BIG JOHN. 189

" Ah ! And did Horlick seem to like it ? "

" I don't know, Uncle John. Me and Con
had to keep marching our soldiers in the
hall."

Big John pondered deeply, very deeply.
Could it really be after all that a girl with a
spirit like Barbara's was in love with a fellow
like Horlick, who, with a fine physique and
perfect health and no ties, made no move to
go to the rescue of his country ?

" And Con never told you they were
engaged ? "

" No, Uncle John. She likes our name for
him very much."

" Your name ? I don't know what you
mean."

' Why, I just told you, Uncle John. You
do forget — ' Malted Milk ' — she said it fitted
him like a glove."

John of Daunt was never clear about the
happenings of the next few minutes ; he
knew he was thumped on the back and gripped
by the arms ; he knew he was rushed back
to the house with his feet hardly touching the
ground. He knew his uncle had tears in his

igo JOHN OF DAUNT.

eyes, although he was shouting hurrah as if a
battle had just been won.

The well-worn motor-car of Dr. Daunt was
at the front door again, and the paid-by-the-
hour chauffeur was in his seat. The arrange-
ment was that Mrs. Daunt and the two children
were to go on and visit the Doctor's parents
for an hour, since they were already within
five miles of them, and it would be a difficult
matter for the Doctor to spare the car again
for another afternoon.

Big John made a straight line for Helen, who
was just getting in.

" I'm coming to dinner with you and the
Doc. to-night," he said. " Pick me up here
on your way back."

' Very glad, of course, John — but — won't
Mother be hurt— she thinks you are dining
with her."

" Yes, sorry. Got to come to you. I'll go
and stay with her now for the next hour. And
I say, Nell ! "

" Jackanapes ? "

Helen would never know when John grew
up. Sisters who have been big when brothers

BIG JOHN. 191

have been little generally feel that way. In
fact, she did not regard him as very much
older than Ian.

" See here, Nell. You've got to get Barbara
to dinner too. It's no good me going to her
house ; those sisters and that little wretch
Con are everywhere. I've got to get her by
herself for an hour. Do you see ? "

" Yes— I see."

' Well, what are you speaking slowly for,
like that ? " demanded the young man fiercely.

" I wasn't speaking slowly," said Helen,
very quickly. " She is the dearest girl I
know."

But she had spoken slowly.

Jackanapes — Barbara — just out of school
the two of them. Ah, why were young things
in such mad haste to take up real life when
careless play life might be made to last a
little longer ? Oh, this war, precipitating
everything ! She rubbed his sleeve sympa-
thetically, however.

" She shall be there if I have to drag her
down by her hair," she said, " her lovely
golden hair."

CHAPTER XVII.

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE.

" In Nature's infinite book of secrecy
A little I can read." — Antony & Cleopatra.

" His talk was all of woodland things.

Of little lives that pass
Away in one green afternoon,
Deep in the scented grass." — LE GALLIENNE.

A HILL ran down to the roadside ; or
up from the roadside, if you prefer
to put it that way. It ran down from
nature, wild bush and trees against the sky,
to civilisation in the form of a little home,
or it ran up from civilisation in the form of a
little home to nature and the wild trees, if
you prefer it put that way. It does not
matter. Just so long as these things run
harmoniously into each other instead of
shrinking apart, aliens and enemies, just so
long, and only just so long, is the balance of

the world in equipoise.

192

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE. 193

It was the most modest of little homes ; it
had the air of a naive and healthy child playing
among the trees.

You almost felt it had grown up out of the
earth, it belonged so rightly to the spot.
Its shingle roof and walls were the warm
brown colour of the young gum shoots ; it
had a white, peaked front door, and the
knocker, low enough for children's hands, had
come from Switzerland, a splendid bit of
antique brass in the shape of a bear's head.

When her grandchildren came to see her it
was etiquette for Mrs. Daunt not to be on the
verandah to greet them and not to answer the
door until two lots of knockings had come,
Dee's eager, hurrying rat-a-tat-a-tat, then
the thundering knocks with which Ian strove
to make the house vibrate.

All round the little house ran a little garden,
the sort of little garden one sees in water-
colours and in books, but too rarely by the
roadside. The paths running everywhere were
of smooth clipped grass ; they were flanked
by tall white lilies, lavender bushes, forests
of larkspur and delphiniums. Thousands of

N

194 JOHN OF DAUNT.

pansies and daisies and primulas and
nemophila, seemed striving to smother the
soil round the taller plants with a creeping
carpet of colour. The air was full of
mignonette and old-fashioned pinks, and
stocks and freezias.

Motor-cars passing used to sniff it, used to
slow down, lean sideways and look at the
little place. They felt that it had some sweet
yet simple secret trembling on its lips that
they would never learn and yet longed to do so.

It was the house of a strong woman and
an amazed man.

No grandfather or grandmother of the
once approved fashion belonged to Ian and
Dee on their father's side any more than on
their mother's.

Mr. Daunt, senior, was a long, lank man,
who had never got over a certain look of
schoolboy awkwardness, and even though at
five-and-fifty he no longer clumsily knocked
over palmstands and outstanding occasional-
tables, it was really mainly because they had
been removed from his life.

He was not awkward in a tree ; those long,

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE. 195

angular legs and arms of his seemed expressly
made for climbing trees. Quite frequently
when Ian arrived he was met by the highly
stimulating statement that Grandpa was up
the red gum-tree and had been there for an
hour.

" The Jacky Winter's nest ? " Ian would
ask excitedly. " Can I 'sturve him ? "

" No, he's watching the native bees ; better
not go ; we'll run the flag up to let him know
you're here."

And the boy would prowl about in the
garden restlessly watching for the quiet tweed
figure in the tree to move, or to catch the
sound perhaps of the click of the camera.

Or it might be that the tweed figure would
be found face downward at the top of the
hill, one eye shut, one with its enlarging glass
on it, watching something on a stalk of grass.

" What's its name, Grandpa ? " Ian would
ask reverently.

And his grandfather would answer with
punctilious care, " I believe it to be the larvae
of margaropus annulatus," or whatever the
thing might be. He never defrauded the boy

196 JOHN OF DAUNT.

even of the name of the order or family
of the thing under observation, and would
often add details about the number of mouths
it had or the large plurality of eggs and eyes
or legs.

There was no drawing-room in this home
on the hillside, but there was a whole apart-
ment given up to glass cases and numbered
boxes, and nests of drawers and thousands of
cards upon which were careful drawings of
insect life enlarged from the microscope.

On lan's seventh birthday Mr. Daunt
emptied a large cabinet, that stood in one
corner, and presented it to the boy, adding as
a nest-egg for it a potato beetle, an antlion,
and the larva of a wasp.

Not an inch in it to-day was vacant ; the
elder naturalist often stood in front of the
chaotic and all-embracing collection of the
younger one and smiled. But he made few
suggestions and few additions to it himself ;
in this sort of thing one followed one's
own bent.

There had one day been a fierce contest
between Jimmie Field and Littlejohn.

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE. 197

Jimmie bragged of his grandfather, who
had once in the ring knocked out the champion
of the day, and the odds ten to one.

" Pooh, that's nothing to what my Gran'-
faver does," said Ian, after nearly bursting
with jealousy for a minute; " my Gran'faver's
discovered things about a simply awful friful
thing."

' Yah ! " said Jimmie sceptically.

" Tell you he has," shouted Ian ; " you
might be dead if he didn't, or all your old
cows and sheep might. It gives them spotted
fever, and millions of pounds get lost, and
you can get it and drop dead like anything."

This seemed worth inquiring into, since
young Daunt seemed so positive.

" Yah ! " said Jimmie, but a shade less
sceptically.

"All right," said Ian, his colour Arising
dangerously. " It has twenty thousand eggs
at a time, and the young one only has three
pairs of legs to start with, an' it climbs up
a stalk of grass and holds them out till a
sheep or something goes by, and then it
grabs hold and gets on it and sucks its blood

ig8 JOHN OF DAUNT.

and when it's had enough it drops off and it
gets another pair of legs and gets out of its
skin, and then it goes >on and has twenty
thousand eggs itself, and they climb up grass
and get on to cows and things. Isn't it all
dead true, Con ? "

" Yes," Con shudderingly attested to
the unvarnished truth of the entire state-
ment.

" How do you know ? " Jimmie pursued,
turning sharply upon the fidus Achates.

" Ian told me," said little Con trustfully.

But Jimmie was not a fidus Achates ; he
was a plain boy with a desire for the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
And anyway the slight cast on his own grand-
father had to be avenged.

"I've never heard of it. What's the name
of the awful, frightful thing ? " he said, and
his intonation was distinctly insulting.

Ian absorbed facts faster than he did those
names on the little boxes in his grandfather's
room. He would have liked to dash Margar-
opus annulatus, or Rhipicephalus appendicu-
latus or Haemaphysalis leachi into his com-

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE. 199

panion's teeth, but the fear of failing with them
kept him back.

" It's a tick," he said.

" Ha, ha ! " shouted Jimmie, " a tick !
I've had dozens of them in me, and they never
gave me spotted fever."

" Not the sort of tick my Gran'faver's
discovered," said Ian, his colour dropping a
second, as it generally did before it rose finally;

" He never discovered it," said Jimmie.

" He did."

" He never."

" Tell you he did."

" He never."

" All right."

Two small boys were rolling in the dust
locked in each other's arms for the further
vindication of the honours of their several
grandfathers.

Jimmy Field was right in the matter.

Mr. Daunt had not discovered Margaropus
annulatus at all ; he had merely spent much
of his leisure for many years in observing
its habits and in writing the results of his
deductions for the learned society to which he

200 JOHN OF DAUNT.

belonged. But he had towering ambitions ;
he began to believe that he might eventually
discover enough about Margaropus to outwit
it, and so be a benefactor to his race and his
country.

One hears of suttee still at times, though
such ceremony seems slowly dying out of
fashion, but it is rare to hear of a woman
sacrificing her life on the altar of a tick.

Mrs. Daunt had achieved the deed, however ;
at least she had climbed cheerfully up into
the position for sacrifice, and it need not be
deducted from the merit of her fine act that
the altar turned out to be the pleasantest
and most peaceful corner that she had yet come
to in life.

If you had been intimate with Bluebell'and
had asked her as between woman and woman
what was the reason that her daughter's
husband's parents lived " in such a poor way,"
she would have had sad things to tell you.
She would have told you what a large house
they once lived in and what large parties they
used to give and how they were able to go
to Europe every five or six years, and keep

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE. 201

two sons at the University and two daughters
doing nothing but look pretty. And she
would have told you how the two daughters
married naval men and went to England to
live, and she would have paused sympathetic-
ally to add, that of course no one knew where
naval men were just now. And she would
have told you how the other son, an engineer,
had come back from his work on the Across
Australia railway and had gone as a sapper
with the second battalion.

To all of which you would have listened
patiently, knowing that Bluebell always was
a little slow in reaching the point of things,
and then at last you might have pressed your
questions — but why had the parents been
living in that poor little cottage stuck away
in the wilds for six long years ? Why had an
active man, not much over fifty, given up a
Government position that brought him in a
thousand a year ? and why had he never
attempted to get another position and con-
tinue to keep up appearances and give his
wife the comforts and the servants to which
she had been accustomed ?

202 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Bluebell would not have openly ascribed it
to the grounds that the man was mad, because
that would in a way have involved the
immaculacy of her own family ; but she had
secretly little doubt of the matter when she
saw all the little boxes filled with ticks. She
would have told you that it was because he was
a grossly selfish and lazy man, and had grown
tired — at fifty ! — of working as other men
worked, and had retired ; and because his
wife was a fool and gave in to him and never
asserted her rights.

Mr. Daunt himself would have endorsed this
story, would have seriously vouched for the
facts that he was a grossly selfish man who had
retired twenty years too early, and that his
wife was indeed a most foolish woman who
never asserted her rights.

But Mrs. Daunt would have made a
tenderer matter of it. She would have told
you that he was a man born a naturalist and
made a Commissioner for Traffic. He had
never complained ; had served traffic faith-
fully for thirty-two years ; brought up four
children on it, given them a splendid time,

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE. 203

started them in life, ministered to all the
furniture and finery passions of a wife ;
never dreamed, indeed — except when he was
feverish or otherwise not himself — of doing
anything different to the end of his working
days. It was only in his dreams that he
chased butterflies and beetles and ticks per-
petually, and had time to continue on a
Monday the exciting discoveries he had made
about them on his one holiday, Sunday.

And suddenly his wife released him. She
had long seen into the heart of his dreams
and had been forced to look away because
she felt helpless.

But now there was no one but herself to be
considered, she forced him to resign. Even
though they had had little chance yet to begin
to save for their own future, she forced him to
resign.

Twenty years before they had bought for a
song a hillside of five acres in a far-away
suburb that had promised to boom and failed
utterly to do so. It was still only worth a
song. They would spend a tiny sum, she
insisted— four or five hundred pounds at

204 JOHN OF DAUNT.

most — on building a little house on it, and
would go and live there for the rest of their
lives if it would make him happy.

Happy ? A hut, a butterfly net, a few boxes
and — time to himself — were the utmost gifts
he would himself have asked of Fate.

But she ? Ought he to let her sacrifice
herself like this ?

She professed herself worn out with the
struggle of housekeeping and of keeping up
with the world, and he believed her thank-
fully.

And so — at last, at last — he had leisure !
Leisure to really look into things after all
these years. Not just an hour or two to
himself on a Sunday, when his girls did not
want to go out in the car, or a fortnight once
a year at a mountain hotel where the maids
swept his finds away, but Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and
Saturday all to himself, and the bush right
at his door, and an entire empty room for his
boxes.

After six years he was still an amazed man,
amazed at his stupendous good fortune.

A HOME ON THE HILLSIDE. 205

After six years she was still a strong woman,
but had also become an amazed one.

For she had been so busy and happy
all the time embroidering her altar cloth,
that she had totally come to forget the altar
underneath.

Rat-at-tat-at-tat went the sharp little
knocking.

She smiled and waited a minute.

Thud, thud, bang bang, boom, boom, went
lan's virile summoning.

She ran to the door.

CHAPTER XVIII.

GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE

" "117 ELL, young Dauntless, and in what
particular branch of warfare have
you been engaging ? " was the elder Daunt's
question when his grandson came some-
what carefully into the little museum instead
of bursting in. The main use of a sling in
the case of small boys is, as all doctors
know, to keep an injury in remembrance.

" Oh, just a dog, Gran'pa," said Ian. " It
chewed me a bit." He was about to pass to
subjects of keener interest when he recollected
the scientific attainments of his grandfather.

" Can you die if poisoned dogs go mad,
Gran'pa ? " he said. " It didn't really get
poisoned, only tried."

A little more of the story came out, and the

naturalist was so swiftly reassuring, with a

206

GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE. 207

judicious mixture of science and sense, that
the boy's last fear died. But he lingered one
second longer on the subject ; one has to have
the respect of the elders — the male elders —
of one's tribe.

" I didn't have chlorryform, Gran'pa," he
said.

" Chloroform," said the old man mechanic-
ally.

" Chlr'form," assented Ian ; " I just let it
hurt."

The old man rubbed the top of the bullet
head.

" You're not sorry ? "

"No. Nex' time aren't even going to say
' Oh ! ' 'Spose Daddie stopped saying ' Oh ! '
at about six, didn't he, Gran'pa ? "

" About," said the elder Daunt, unsmiling.
He carefully fetched out an incident of his
son's early courage and plainly he must have
told it with dramatic power for the little boy's
face was warm and moved, and he said after a
whole minute's silence :

" Gran'pa, I just like Daddie. Don't you ? "

" I do;" said the elder Daunt.

208 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Then they got back on to the more comfort-
able plane of everyday things. A gum leaf
with little swellings on it like red miniature
apples was taken from lan's pocket, admired
and commented on and very briefly explained.

" That young Dee wanted it to make a doll's
pie with, but I knew it was valu'ble, and I
kept it for the c'llection," said Ian, and opened
one of his drawers for it. Several other urgent
matters were discussed like the makings of
clouds and the true reason for the flies on
window-panes being silly goats.

The naturalist, deeply, tenderly happy in
his listener, added two or three words more
than he need have done to a statement.
Ian began to fidget, then to sniff.

" I b'lieve Gran'ma's making something else
in the kitchen," he said.

" I believe she is," said his grandfather, and
was alone again, humbled in a moment.

A kitchen with a servant in it is just any
sort of a place ; dinner is cooked in it, and
washing-up is done, and though you may
find opportunities for trying the eggbeater
that has a wheel to it and the newest thing

GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE. 209

in knife-cleaners, it really does not count
greatly in the scheme of life.

A kitchen with two servants in it is a foreign
land. Even if one of them will permit you
to heat glue on the gas stove, the other one
objects and says that it gets on the irons.
You cannot help yourself to the sugar that
comes free in the candied peel or to macaroons
that went down from the drawing-room on the
afternoon tea-tray, or to the long end of the
roly-poly pudding that was left and that
your system urgently required ; they have
eaten these things themselves. They even
make an alliance against you in the matter
of borrowing the implements you absolutely
cannot get on without, like the ice pick, and
the corkscrew, and knives, and the hammer,
and the sausage machine.

But a kitchen without a servant in it at all !
A shining little place with mignonette and
lobelia on the window-sill and a canary on the
wall just outside, and a cat on the hearthrug,
and all the beautiful, the fascinating drama of
food preparation being carried on in every
act by your grandmother herself !

210 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Meals were not just meals here ; to help
get lunch ready on this hillside was to assist
with a festival that was Olympian in its
splendid simplicity.

You knew the origins of everything you
carried in without needing to ask a word of
anybody. Had you not been out in the fowl-
yard and yourself brought in the warm brown
eggs from the nests in the hay there ? The
jug of milk ? Why, you had watched the
youth, William, milking the red and white
cow, and had given him all manner of advice
and hints on the better management of cow
bails. You had been in the dairy and helped
shake up the butter in the glass churn, and
you had watched the cream for the baked
apples being skimmed off the big yellow bowl
of yesterday's milk.

The baked apples ? You had been up the
cooking-apple tree yourself and selected them
after trying with your own teeth and rejecting
a few unripe ones. You had brought them
in and cored them yourself with that handy
little arrangement that was on the other end
of the nutmeg-grater ; you had rubbed a bit

GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE. 211

of butter on them and poured a little water in
the dish round them and opened the oven door
and put them in to bake yourself. No mystery
about baked apples and cream for you !

The pot of honey ? When you have had a
fly-veil on, and been on the hill with your
grandfather and helped empty the hive and
been stung in two places because you took the
veil off too soon, and had the sting extracted
and been rubbed with earth, there is not much
you do not know about honey.

You are able to roar with laughing at the
little city boy in your story book who went
on a visit to a farm and said, " This *s nice
honey. I do like this honey. Oh, I wish we
kept a bee."

Yes, a meal was a feast on the hillside ; and
a movable feast. There was a round table
in the garden, very easy to move, and you
helped to drag it wherever seemed the
pleasant est spot in the world at the moment.

To-day the sharp rat-a-tat and the sonorous
hammering had hardly died away before both
children were making a request.

" Make some ginger-boys, Gran."

212 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" Dinger-boys, Dran."

" Don't you do any such^thing, Grannie,"
said their mother. " They've had afternoon
tea at Bluebell's, and afternoon tea with such
a lot of frills to it, as it was her birthday,
that I know I'll have them both in bed to-
morrow. They made perfect little pigs of
themselves over the birthday cake."

" But that was ever so long ago, Mother,"
said Ian indignantly. " We've come all that
way since. I'm hungry as anything again."

" Hungry as anyfing," said Dee plaintively.

" And we have much less than an hour,
Grannie dear," said young Mrs. Daunt. " Blue-
bell had tea for us at half-past three as we
were so short of time, but it's half-past four
now. Even if we leave here at a quarter
past five we shan't get home till a quarter to
six. And I've to pick John up on the way and
take him home with me. And I've to rush
out again to another house to get hold of a
girl with golden hair and take her home with
me. And dinner's at seven, and I know there
won't be anything fit to eat or even enough
of it. And if there isn't enough Steve will

GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE. 213

be certain to have brought a man in unex-
pectedly to take pot-luck. He has an unerring
instinct in choosing the day when there's
next to nothing in the pot."

" Seven o'clock ! " said Mrs. Daunt senior
with serenity. ' Why, that is hours away !
The children shall have their proper tea here
before they go, and that will save trouble at
home. There will be nothing to do for them
but see them to bed."

" But they couldn't eat a proper tea yet ! "
objected their mother.

" Oh, couldn't they ! " said Ian. " I'm just
starving again."

" Chust 'tarving," asserted Dee.

" There's nothing to really bite on in that
sort of birthday cake," said Ian.

" Nofing to bite on," said Dee.

" Make some ginger-boys, Gran," said Ian
in a clench- the-matter tone.

" Dinger-boys, Dran," said Dee, her intona-
tion precisely that of her brother.

" The oven's so beautifully hot," said Mrs.
Daunt senior, pleadingly.

Mrs. Daunt junior had been endowed with

214 JOHN OF DAUNT.

far too acute a power of putting herself in
other people's places ; she saw in a moment,
most vividly, the interiors of her offspring
— yawning chasms that nothing in the world
but ginger-boys would fill.

She laughed and pulled off her gloves.

" Go on," she said, " go on. I always know
when I'm beaten. Well, I'll go and ring
Gertrud up a minute."

So Mrs. Daunt senior rolled up her sleeves
and put on a large apron ; and Miss Daunt
junior rolled up her sleeves and put on a little
apron ; it always hung ready for her on a hook
in the pantry. And Ian consented to having
a tea-towel tied round him to protect him from
the flour, and then they all three worked most
earnestly with flour and butter and sugar
and a little ginger, and just enough currants
for eyes and buttons down the front. As an
accompaniment to these deep and subtle joys,
they could hear Dinky 's voice at the telephone.

" That you, Daisy ? Ask Gertrud to come
and speak to me." Ian, engaged in the
delicate operation of flouring his board saw
the scene vividly — Daisy with her mouth

GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE. 215

pursed up going to the top of the basement
steps and calling " Gert," if it were a day of
peace, or " Gertrud," if war were raging
between them. He could see Gertrud coming
ponderously upstairs in the black and white
check frock she always wore in the kitchen
in the afternoon. He could see her slowly
taking up the large receiver and putting it
to her ear, and then the small one, and then
breathing heavily a minute while she repressed
the desire to say " Ja ? " or " Hein ? " said
instead, in a tone calculated to make the
ringer-up realise he had no trifler at the other
end, " Yes ! ! ! "

" I am bringing two visitors home for dinner,
Gertrud," said Mrs. Daunt, just successfully
repressing the strong inclination to say
" Gertrud, please."

" Nein," said Gertrud with much decision.
" It iss not possible. The cutlets there are
only seven and the pudding it iss in the schmall
dish."

" Yes, I know, Gertrud. But you must do
your best. Make some soup for a first course."

" Ach, nein," said Gertrud, "it is five

216 JOHN OF DAUNT.

o'clock — I haf no soup-vater in the pot—
I not am able to make soup at five o'clock."

" If you put some soup-powder to it,
Gertrud, it would be strong enough," pleaded
Mrs. Daunt, well realising that neither of her
guests would taste the faintest difference,
at such a time, between the strongest stock and
hot water flavoured with Worcester sauce.

" Nein," said Gertrud inflexibly ; she was
the soundest of cooks and her principles
were life and death to her. " It would not
at all do."

Mrs. Daunt bowed to the voice and will
nine miles away.

" Very well then, please do this, Gertrud.
Open a tin of that mock turtle soup that is
on the top shelf of the pantry. And there
are some tomatoes in the safe ; please make
four savouries ; you know how, a neat little
piece of bread and butter and then a slice
of tomato and on top of that an anchovy.
It will be very little trouble. You can hear
me, can't you Gertrud ? "

A guttural sound came along the wires.

" Also open a tin of that curried fowl and

GINGER-BOYS AND A BILL OF FARE. 217

serve it very hot in the second entree dish.
Of course boil some rice with it. Nonsense,
Gertrud. I never heard of such a thing, we
can't be out of rice ! "

" Nein, there iss no rice."

" Gertrud," said the voice nine miles away,
and there was now a note of inflexible
determination in it that carried all the way,
" There will be rice there by the time
I come home. If we are out of it you will go
at once up to the shops and buy it. Do you
hear me ? And you will make pineapple
fritters and dampmudeln and an apple
charlotte and a good custard for extra
puddings. Do you hear me ? And very
good coffee. Remember, nothing is to be
forgotten."

Gertrud answered, with instant respect and
resignation, that nothing should be forgotten.

" And now," said Dinky, joining the happy
band in the kitchen, " give me a bit of paste
and let me make a Ginger-Boy."

"Mother," said Ian, "can I stay up 'for
dinner to-night ? Go on. It sounds a
bonser one."

CHAPTER XIX.

MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS, AND A LITTLE
ABOUT WILLIAM.

T^INKY, who had an unconquerable habit
of working furiously fast at whatever
she was doing, had her Ginger-Boy finished
and ready for the oven while the others were
still shaping and trimming.

So then she had time to idle and she sat on
the edge of the little knife-table and filled
the time by studying her mother-in-law. The
rolled-up sleeves, the apron, the simply done
hair, the hands no longer smooth and white,
— she studied them all.

" I wonder do I like you so much because
your dress only cost ten and sixpence," she
said.

"Eleven and threepence halfpenny, dear,"

said Mrs. Daunt reprovingly. " I had for-

218

MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS. 219

gotten the buttons and the Petersham belt-
ing when I told you ten and six."

" Eleven and threepence ha'penny," said
Dinky, looking lovingly at the pale grey
zephyr with its muslin collar. " Do you ever
think about the dresses you used to wear
before you came here ? "

" Once in a way," said Mrs. Daunt, rolling
energetically. " Put a little more flour on,
Dee, you're getting it too sticky."

" I wish you'd worn a ten and sixpenny,
— I mean an eleven and threepence halfpenny
dress when I met you first," said Dinky. " I
was horribly nervous of you. You've no
idea what a haughty sort of woman you
seemed when Mrs. Markham introduced us
that time at the University tennis party. I
don't know whether it was your instinct up in
arms that I had designs on your son, or whether
it was just your very fashionable clothes."

" Quite probably my clothes," said Mrs.
Daunt. "It grows harder and harder to
find out which is the woman and which the
clothing. I think that's one of the reasons
why there is more real loneliness to-day than

220 JOHN OF, DAUNT.

there ever was. People simply can't find
one another."

" I certainly couldn't find Di this afternoon,"
said Dinky with sudden childish resentment.

" She had a dress on that I'm going short
of yet. Really you know, Grannie, I'm just
as good looking as Di, and only a year older
and quite as nice. I repeat it, quite as nice.
And yet she contrived to make me feel a
clumsy, uncultured sort of person who didn't
count at all. Just because she'd a frock on of
that exquisite simplicity that only Paris can
make, and I'd this last year's coat and skirt
that cost five guineas ready made — and
betrays the fact brazenly."

"Silly little Dinky!" said Mrs. Daunt.
" Well, here are some more eyes, Dee,
but you mustn't eat them again before you
put them in."

Dee had no notions of schoolboy honour
yet. She pointed a floury finger at Ian in
self-defence.

" He eated his buttings," she said, " I ony
eated mine eyes."

They both were given fresh supplies of

MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS. 221

both buttons and eyes and warned that it
was the very last time.

" Oh, of course I know it's silly," said
Helen, " but that's just it. Ought people
like Di to be let loose in the world stirring
up silliness and littleness in ill-balanced
persons like myself ? I'm sure it's not clothes
themselves that women are so mad about.
It's just that they hate to feel inferior. If
people like Di and Bluebell were kept in a
paddock all to themselves with a high fence
round them so that the rest of the world
couldn't see them, the ,rest of the world
could be so comfortable and happy. Look at
you, you're as happy as a queen and look
sweeter than one, in a frock at eleven and
threepence ha'penny. But you know you
wouldn't have the moral courage to go and
call on Bluebell in it."

" But I've the courage not to go and call
on Bluebell in it," said Mrs. Daunt opening
the oven.

" But Bluebell's a person well worth
knowing," insisted Helen, " you lose a lot if
you pass her by."

222 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" Oh, Mother ! " said Ian, " do stop talking
' buts ' to Grannie. Grannie wants to talk
about nice things, don't you,, Grannie ? How
long shall we leave them in the oven, eh ?
Shall I put another bit of wood on to make
it quicker ? "

The Ginger-Boys came back to their
rightful place in the scheme of nature.

Dee had made two, one for herself and one
for her father.

Ian had made two, one for himself and one
for his uncle. A desire had stirred for a
moment to make a third when he was
passionately admiring the way he had cut
the legs ; he saw himself offering it to
Barbara, watching the marvellous teeth bite
down on the thickly-sugared coat. But he
only made two ; Barbara had to be given up.

The extra piece of wood made the oven a
little too quick. The Boys came out, half
of them done to a turn, half of them rather
deeply burnt.

Dee claimed her own two and regarded
them steadfastly a moment ; the burnt one
and the crisp and beautiful one.

MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS. 223

" Oh ! " she said with extreme mournfulness,
as she put her teeth into the beautiful one,
" poor Daddie's Dinger-boy all burnt up ! "

Ian had the same problem to face ; it
was really a horrid one until he remembered
that in the trenches there would be no such
things as Ginger-Boys. And then he ate the
burnt one cheerfully, Still, sacrifice makes
a vacuum in the boy-economy that needs to
be rilled very quickly.

He began to fidget for his pendulum to
swing back again ; he felt suddenly a little
worn and strained with goodness. Where
was William ?

He looked towards his mother and his
grandmother, but they were deeply engaged
in talking " buts " again. He looked at Dee.
She was profoundly occupied in trying to
make crumbs of her Ginger-Boy adhere to
the black stitches that stood for the mouth of
Boodle the Second.

He stole on tip-toe out into the garden to
look for William.

Now, while Mrs. Daunt senior might be
permitted to perform the lighter tasks of

224 JOHN OF DAUNT.

her domestic economy, even though such took
from the smoothness of her hands, she could
not be permitted to scrub potatoes or chop
the wood, or milk the cow, or do the really
heavy tasks in the garden, and this is where
William came in.

William had been in mortal peril of
" coming in " too often.

They had never been able to teach him
to read as a boy, and hardly to write, but he
had never failed to keep his mother's wood-
shed full of neatly-cut wood and to grow
potatoes and onions for her and to wipe his
feet on the mat before he came in to his tea.
In fact, out of six sons, five of them quite
able to read and write, William was the one
who gave the most real comfort to his mother
and, in consequence, she had a very poor
opinion of him.

,. The vice of his life was obedience and
faithfulness ; he did whatever anyone told
him to do and continued doing it to an
indefinite extent.

Consequently, when he grew to be seventeen
or so and began to realise that he was not

MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS. 325

fully appreciated by his mother, chop he
quite unceasingly, he became hurt ; they
had never been able to teach him not to feel.
So he began to look round in his village for
some one else^to obey and be faithful to, and
he chose a professional burglar who happened
to be there visiting his old home. This
gentleman had asked him to have a drink
at his, the professional burglar's, expense.
They were soon great friends and William
wrapped up his clothes one night in a sugar
bag ; his best suit, that his mother hardly
ever permitted him wear, and one of his best
boots (the other one pinched him so he left
it behind as a sort of punishment for it) and
all his thirteen ties — the passion of his life
was ties — and he went away to the city with
Collins the professional burglar who was so
very kind as to pay half his fare.

And then began his entries. He "came
in" through pantry and such unconsidered
windows with much success on four or five
occasions, his habit of implicit obedience
standing him in great .stead. Collins became

kinder and kinder to him.

p

226 JOHN OF DAUNT.

But on the sixth occasion he let his personal
equation come into play and there was an end
to things.

Sent merely to abstract a gold watch from
the table of a gentleman who selected a visible
spot on a boarding-house balcony for his
slumbers, William conceived the independent
notion of also abstracting a tie, which even
the faint light of dawn betrayed to be of
unusual splendour.

Indeed, so overcome was he by the beauty
of the pattern that he became confused and
gave the wrong signal at the window ; he
fluttered his handkerchief, which meant that
an excellent opportunity existed for Collins
himself to follow in person and secure a haul.

Collins followed. Also, at least eight or
nine shots from revolvers ; the gentleman
with the gold watch contributed two, another
excited boarder two more, a determined
middle-aged lady, in a purple kimono, and
with her hair in a long thin plait, put a bullet
into William's left ankle, and Collins added
two or three remarks from his own firearm
in pure self-defence.

MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS. 227

Collins was deterred from visiting his native
village for a term of seven years, but the judge
had no difficulty in deciding as to William's
share in the matter, and after two years'
invaluable discipline and genuine improvement
he was released.

A member of the Discharged Prisoners'
Association happened to be an old friend of
Mrs. Daunt senior ; she sought to interest
her in the career of the youth who would do
what anybody told him and continue to do it
indefinitely. In the end, Mrs. Daunt, in need
of a youth to help her in the garden, consented
to try the discharged prisoner who had at
least two years' blameless record behind him
and a face rather touching in its emptiness.

So William came to the hillside and he
chopped wood and milked the cow, and grew
potatoes, and dug in the garden with all the
passion of faithfulness that he had given to
his mother, and to Collins, and to the prison
authorities, but with the amazing difference,
that he now got fifteen shillings a week for
doing it and all the neckties that could be
collected from Dr. Daunt and from Mr. John,

228 JOHN OF DAUNT.

and much kindly sympathy and guidance
in the matter of choice of new ties.

Much of the reason why motor-cars slowed
down and looked wistfully at the hillside
garden was due to William's faithfulness in
the matter of digging and fertilizing.

After five or six years he was still obeying
and had only one other vice besides his
passion for neckties, that of going to a
roller rink three miles away two evenings
a week. He still walked slightly lame from the
middle-aged lady's bullet, but on skates he
totally forgot the injury.

Still, one naturally trembled to let a tender
grandson, with angelic eyes, be exposed to the
breath of evil from such a youth.

Mrs. Daunt was unwearying in her
endeavours to keep Ian from any contact
with this, her gardener, on the not frequent
visits to the hillside. In fact, she was too
unwearying. Ian had long suspected the
continual frustrations he met with in this
respect and now at last he was in possession
of all William's history.

Mrs. Daunt had been unwell a few weeks

MORE ABOUT GINGER-BOYS. 229

before, and her daughter-in-law had sent Daisy
to her to help her for a week. Daisy and
William had meals together four or five times
a day, and Daisy, fat and really of much
kindliness, had consented to look at the
entire collection of ties and pass her opinion
upon them.

In return William confided in her all the
history of his life from the time his brothers
used to make him do their work for them,
to the incident of Mr. Collins, and the results
of the incident.

And Daisy told Ian as a matter of course.
When you have an active boy in pink pyjamas
with hardly anything to do before breakfast,
while you are polishing floors, and when you
realise even better than his parents the
unquenchable thirst he has for all kinds of
information, you naturally do your best in
the matter of news.

William's story had immensely excited Ian.

When his grandmother said, in that careful
tone of hers just as he made a move to the
garden, " Don't hinder William this afternoon,
please, Ian, I am anxious for him to get that

230 JOHN OF DAUNT.

bed dug over. Grandpa will be glad to have
you," Ian answered, as in duty bound, " Yes,
Grannie."

He had no intention whatever of hindering
William. William could dig as much as he
liked ; he only wanted a "bit of a yarn."

Mrs. Daunt would not have sat so calmly
talking to Dinky and playing with Dee if
she had dreamed that she had left a gate
open to a possible corruption.

But it was not her grandson who was in
any danger of corruption !

" William turned pale ; even now, after five years, he did not like
any reference made to gold watches."

John of Daunt}

[Chapter XX

CHAPTER XX.

MORE ABOUT WILLIAM.

'II7ILLIAM was faithfully digging.

First of all he removed the top-spit
and laid it in a heap on the path, then
he dug a trench ; then he dug another trench
alongside it and put all the contents of it into
his first trench ; then he dug a third trench,
the material of which he deposited in his
second trench and so on ad infinitum.

No better way of digging new land exists.

"Hullo," said Ian.

William touched his cap : here was one of
his betters even if only a small and
determinedly friendly one. They attend to
your manners very well when you go to
prison.

" Digging ? " continued Ian genially.
231

232 JOHN OF DAUNT.

William plunged his spade into fresh, hard
ground and worked furiously ; he was
genuinely anxious to be admired ; he knew
that he was a past-master in the art. He
kept glancing out of his eye-corners at Ian
for signs of approval and then tempestuously
tearing again -at the earth.

But Ian did not seem admiring ; merely
thoughtful.

" I say, William," he said, after looking
carefully around to see that no one was about,
" I expect you've got a lot of holes dug
somewhere about here ? "

William respectfully testified to the fact
that he did the entire digging of the garden
unaided.

" Oh, you know what I mean," said
Ian, dropping his voice, " holes you put
your gold watches and things in. You
know."

William turned pale ; even now after five
years, he did not like any reference made
to gold watches.

The hand on his spade shook.

" You needn't be afraid of me knowing,"

MORE ABOUT WILLIAM. 233

Ian said reassuringly, "I never let things out.
Peanuts, I don't."

Still William looked about in an upset
fashion and entirely ceased to dig.

Ian sat on his haunches on the path.

" What I should do," he said, " would be
to dig my hole at the foot of a tree, and then
put a secret sign, not on that tree but three
trees away. You know, an arrow thing in
the bark. I'll show you how to make them
if you like. Then no one knows but yourself.
I should put moss on top of the hole again
and scatter old leaves on so no one could
guess."

William looked more terrified than ever ;
in this sort of vein had talked his one-time
friend, Collins.

"&When you can't get gold watches,
William," said Ian, " what's the next best
thing ? Forks and things ? I expect you
know how to boil forks down and make
shillings and half-crowns of them ? Do you
put them in a saucepan or just lay them in
the coals ? Once when I was toasting I
dropped Dee's fork right in and it simply

234 JOHN OF DAUNT.

sizzled up to nothing. You couldn't have
made a threepenny-bit of it. What do you
do, William?"

These were depths of infamy that not even
William had sounded : he merely looked
paler still. Ian came closer, became more
brotherly than ever.

"William," he said, "what's it like in that
Black Maria ? Jimmie says it's so full of
you you can't breathe and you're all chained
to one another by your legs and arms. Are
you ? "

William looked at him in helpless
fascination.

" Are you ? " repeated Ian.

The man gave a shudder.

" Well, what's it like in prison, then ? "
said Ian. " What's the cat-an-ninetails like
really ? Do you get it every day ? How
often do you get put on the triangle ?
Jimmie says '

William was feebly putting the top spit at
the bottom of one of his trenches ; a thing
he had never done before in his life ; he felt
as if he stood in a sea of trenches, all of which

MORE ABOUT WILLIAM. 235

were trying to suck him down to prison
again, where there were no neckties. With
his jaw dropped and a piteous sort of look
in his eyes he looked indeed a poor kind
of hero.

Ian found himself encouraging him in the
kindest way. " Burglars weren't half as smart
as you'd think," he told him ; " lots of times
Daisy had forgotten to lock the kitchen 'door
and he (Ian) had found it wide open early
in the morning and not a single one had
broken in."

He paused a minute : a boy must not
endanger the safety of his own family.

" My father's watch isn't gold," he said,
" just gun metal ; and our forks are only
that electric stuff, not real silver; I asked
mother. And she puts her rings and things
in the burglar safe, so no one will ever be
able to steal those."

William's eyes were taking a curious, re-
membering expression ; he was beginning to
breathe a shade more quickly. It had ended
badly; certainly, but those days with Collins
had been some of the most genuinely happy

236 JOHN OF DAUNT.

ones he had ever spent ; he had felt that he
was a man and alive.

" Does she — Daisy — does she ever forget to
lock the pantry window ? " he said in a
whisper.

But this was making it far too much a
family matter.

"It's got wire stuff nailed on it," Ian replied
craftily, " and besides, my father's got guns
and swords and sticks, and so have I. They'd
better not come to our house."

William wilted somewhat at that ; the
thought of Daisy being there had seemed for a
moment to make a simple and friendly matter
of the just conceived idea. He abandoned it
sadly.

But Littlejohn was still athirst.

" If I was a burglar," he said, " I wouldn't
go and break into plain houses. I'd go for
jewellers ! All you've got to do is to get a
real diamond and cut a hole in the glass and
just fill your pockets up with watches. Down
at Bright and Peterson's there are fifty-nine
gold watches in the window, and twenty-two
diamond rings, and a hundred and four

MORE ABOUT WILLIAM. 237

bracelets and chain things to hang round
women's necks. Con and me counted them."

William listened to him with eyes and
mouth.

" Then there's the bank," said Ian, " I've
been in often with father. They get
sovereigns out of the drawers with shovels, and
only keep them just under the counter, not
in safes. Hundreds and thousands of them
there must be ; and half-crowns ! Why I
expect they keep them in buckets they've
got such lots."

"Buckets!" echoed William.

" Con and me's often thought how easy it
would be to attack that bank," pursued Ian,
" after three no one's there getting money
— and only just those two men behind the
counter beginning to lock up. Jump over
the counter very suddenly, knock the big one
over, I'd be doing that ; tie his hands with
rope and put a cloth over his mouth so he
couldn't scream. Con hold the other chap
till I was ready ; take out my revolver, hold
it to his head till he gave me the keys. Fill
all our pockets and bags up with the gold and

238 JOHN OF DAUNT.

slip out locking the big doors behind us.
They wouldn't be found till next day, it
doesn't open till ten ! By then we'd have it
all buried in our hole and could just go and
get some when we wanted."

William breathed hard ; his eyes grew more
and more intelligent. " 'Spose there were
three men though," he said.

Ian had met this contingency in thought
also.

" If there were three," he said slowly, "it
would be harder but we could do it. Con
would have to take the big one then and be
keeping him still with a chlor'form mask,
while I gagged the mouths of the other two.
I might have to shoot if they fought hard,
but only at their legs, because they're nice
men. Did it hurt getting the bullet out of
your leg that time, William ? I say, William,
take your boot off and let me see it. Dais}7
says there's a big hole there."

But William's thoughts moved slowly.

" 'Spose there were four men there," he
said and breathed hard and plunged his spade
again in the ground.

MORE ABOUT WILLIAM. 239

" Oh, you'd wait then, crouched down, till
some of them went home," answered Ian,
carelessly.

" In buckets ! " reiterated William in a
choked sort of voice.

" Ian ! Ian ! Come here at once," called
his grandmother from the verandah, "I
thought you were with grandpa. My dear,
I thought I particularly asked you to let
William get on with his digging ! "

" He is getting on with his digging,"
replied Ian, " Aren't you, William ? " He's
digging like anything, Grannie, all the time.
Good-bye, William, I've got to be going now."

William forgot to touch his cap ; he stood
staring with wistful, dog-like eyes at the
retreating figure of the small boy.

He watched him being kissed good-bye, saw
him climb into the front seat of the car, heard
him giving the chauffeur suggestions about
new and better ways of starting. He leaned
on his spade and sighed profoundly.

" I do hope William did the dear child
no harm," thought the fond grandmothej,
anxiously looking at him.

CHAPTER XXI.

CON AND CON'S SISTER.

morning jaunt with Ian seemed
to have served as a priceless tonic for
him ; his temperature was normal, the
light of health was in his eyes ; his throat
was a plain, calm passage again, instead of an
angry little Dardanelles that bristled with
foreign guns at any attempt to get food
through.

But he was strictly confined to his bed
still, and strongly redolent of the turpentine
with which Barbara had so faithfully rubbed
him.

He was quite happy however. He had
three model submarines, five gunboats, two
men-o'-war and the Queen Elizabeth disposed
about the counterpane waves of the ^Egean

Sea. His own chest was the beach upon

240

CON AND CON'S SISTER. 241

which many a mortal conflict took place
when the matchbox containing a soldier or
two had ridden safely over the turbulent
waters of his knee and gained the harbour.

The pillow of course was the heights of
Gaba Tepeh, and every match that you saw
strewn in the deep ridges of it was a fire-eating
Turk.

But the subtlest, most dramatic action
going forward from time to time was in
connection with the high half circle of iron
that supported the mosquito nets.

The idea of it was originally lan's, born
out of the sheer necessity of something to do
on an occasion when he had been sent to his
bed, for the good of his soul, at the terrible
hour of five o'clock.

A long piece of string was passed over the
curved rod of the high canopy and its two
ends dangled at a height convenient to the
person enforcedly occupying the pillow.

To one end of the string was tied from
time to time the most gallant and battered
and beloved soldier in the regiment, and up
he was hauled, hand over hand, to perform

Q

242 JOHN OF DAUNT.

perilous and breathless deeds, often lost
completely to sight in the heavy folds of the
valance. Sometimes two, or even three,
veterans were tied together for the task and
sent up to the far heights, and then the springs
of the bed leapt aloud with the excitement
of the far conflict.

It had been a task of no small difficulty
for Con to pass the string over the high
canopy rod.

i When you have behaved with such
thoughtlessness and cruelty to your well-
loved eldest sister that she has to disburse
a sovereign of the housekeeping money to
satisfy the police on your behalf, you are shy
about asking favours of her that would
involve her having to get the step-ladder
from downstairs.

And when she is determinedly staying
actually in the room with you all the time
—a totally unnecessary precaution seeing
that Ian would not be in the least likely to
come again that day and tempt you out,
you do not get a chance to climb into a
standing position with one foot on the head-

CON AND CON'S SISTER. 243

iron and with an arm clutched round the
post, swing yourself forward and pass the
string over the requisite spot.

Con watched his sister with patient eyes
for some time, as she sat knitting so steadily
in the window, and for some time he con-
tented himself with the evolutions of the
landing party ; but presently he could see that
she had ceased to know that her work
had fallen on to her knee, that she was sitting
as still as a girl in a dream, her golden head
a little dropped forward.

Something of lan's far-seeing spirit stirred
in Con ; he realised that now was the
accepted moment for his chance, and very,
very quietly he disengaged himself from the
bedclothes, drew himself up on the pillow,
got into kneeling position, standing position,
climbing, clutching position. It was not
until the moment when he was strained
perilously forward with the string, like a
grey pyjamaed spider clinging by one right
leg to a branch, that Barbara was sufficiently
awakened by the creaking iron to turn
round.

244 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" And now what are you doing, you bad
little boy ? " she said, starting hastily forward.

" Just straightening the curtain thing for
you, Barb darling," said the bad little boy
in the very voice of the friend who led him
astray.

" I've a great mind," said Barbara, " a
very great mind to give you another rubbing.
And a much harder one than the last." She
looked threateningly at the turpentine bottle.
" Cover yourself up."

"Yes/ Barbara."

" Right up to the neck."

"Yes, Barbara."

" Don't you dare to let me see you doing
that again."

" Oh no, Barbara."

Why should he ? The string was delight-
fully in position.

Barbara went back to her dispirited gazing
into space at the window, and the scaling of
the heights of Gaba Tepeh and Suvla went
•magnificently forward.

Space was too vast, too cold a place to be
gazed into by girl-eyes. Girl-eyes ought to

CON AND CON'S SISTER. 245

have concrete things at which to gaze — or
things at least that are as much concrete
abstractions as are sunshine and happiness.

Life that lies so lightly on young things they
never realise the touch is there at all, had
suddenly clutched with heavy fingers at
Barbara.

That boy, John, or that man John as he
would have called himself, — lan's uncle,
who had teased her, and carried her school
bag for her — it was not a year since she had
been carrying a school bag — and had played
tennis with her and rowed her in boats, was
going back again to the War.

What was that ? Were not all the boys
and men who had teased her and played
tennis with her and rowed her in boats either
at the War or going to it for the first or second
time — with the exception of " Malted Milk,"
or those held back by physical disabilities
or unavoidable responsibilities.

But this boy's eyes had looked deep into
her own one little moment, and with her own
she had looked back deep into his : one
moment, just one little moment.

246 JOHN OF DAUNT.

That was all, quite all ; the next minute
the quick, clumsy world had crashed in
between them and it had continued to crash
ever since. He had seemed pushed hither
and thither blindly by life, and she had been
jerked, by the same hands, into a waiting
position ; there seemed nothing for her
to do but to be feverishly foolish with the
" Silly Rabbit," and to pour out afternoon
tea for the perpetually calling " Malted
Milk," and to keep Con away from the cor-
rupting influence of Little] ohn ; and to read
the War news in the papers — eternally to
read the war news in the papers. But
this ache at her heart, this dull, strange,
ache ! This gnawing, this perpetual gnawing
at her pride ! He had not looked into her
eyes like that at all ; she had imagined it ; he
had not even come to wring her hand and
say good-bye before he left.

He had come back on a short furlough to
recover from his wound, and he had not
attempted to seek her out. He was going
back again almost at once and again he had
not come to say good-bye. He had forgotten,

CON AND CON'S SISTER. 247

she told herself, in his new excitements,
that she existed.

She looked away from space. Space was
too bitterly empty to be looked at any more.

She looked down on to the friendlier roofs
and then into the familiar street.

There was the Doctor's well-known car
at the door, filled, not with the Doctor's well-
known form, but full to overflowing with
forms known so very well.

There was Little] ohn, one arm in a bandage,
the other frantically waving to her.

There was Mrs. Daunt stepping down on
to the pavement : there was Dee's inquisitive
little face poked over the door. There was a
figure in khaki sitting very still and looking
with a set young face at the front door.

Then all was gone again in a flash : the car
and its occupants moved off to the other end
of the terrace, then vanished away behind
the scenes.

Just Mrs. Daunt remained down there on
the doorstep, ringing at the bell.

CHAPTER XXII.

HOW SHORT ALL A DAY IS.

" And her face so fair

Stirr'd with her dreams, as rose leaves with the air."

— BYRON.

II) UT you do not in the least betray your-
self even if you are only eighteen and
there has been a sudden convulsion of nature.

Summoned down by Bella, to Mrs. Daunt
in the drawing-room, kissed and asked to
dine, Barbara was by no means sure if it
could be managed.

" You see I really ought to stay and mind
my little brother," she said " you know what
happened when I wasn't minding him this
morning."

" But I promise you Ian shall be under your
own observation all the time " said Mrs. Daunt,

" then you will be certain that Con is safe."

248

HOW SHORT ALL A DAY IS. 249

" Perhaps I oughtn't to leave Mother,"
said Barbara, sticking up a new defence.

" Amy and Flora between them, supported
by Effie and Noela, will be able to take your
place for once," smiled Mrs. Daunt.

" Father," said Barbara, clinging desperately
to her defence — " he doesn't seem to like me
to be away for dinner too often."

' When were you away last ? " smiled Mrs.
Daunt. " Run along. Run and tell your
mother that I have come to ask for you
because my brother is dining with us for the
last time before he goes again to the Front
and the Doctor and I are not young enough
company any longer to keep up a young
man's spirits."

So much one mother felt she owed to the
other. Barbara's face was deeply dyed by
this ; she only made one more stand.

" I'm not even dressed," she said ; " I'm only
in my morning blouse ; after all this upset
I didn't feel up to changing for dinner and
you say you have visitors. Wouldn't it be
better if I come some other night, Mrs. Daunt
— when you are alone ? "

250 JOHN OF DAUNT.

" No," said Mrs. Daunt, " it would not be
better. You look quite pretty enough for
anything in that blouse. Go and ask your
mother this minute."

The girl went.

When she came back — and really the time
occupied was barely eight minutes — not only
had consent been gained, but the morning
blouse had vanished. There was a young
and shining vision in a fresh white muslin
frock, with a pink rose, hastily snatched
from the dinner table, stuck in its belt ; it
had even had time to take down its hair and
pile it up afresh, and change into fine silk
stockings and its very best shoes. Certainly
its colour was heightened with the extreme
haste.

Big John had gone upstairs to wash his
hands.

Littlejohn was solemn and somewhat
repressed. He had an instinct of great things
pending.

Big John looked rather strange ; a sort
of sick look was on his face. He washed his
hands two or three times just to pass the

HOW SHORT ALL A DAY IS. 251

time and he combed his hair, though really
the barber at camp had hardly left him a
bit to comb.

"Ought we to be going down,", he asked
Littlejohn, nervously, from time to time.

Little] ohn reassured him. Gertrud's Dam-
few pudding — not swearing dam, just
German — hadn't turned out too well and
she was frantically making nudeln to take
its place, which would make things late.
Also Daisy had forgotten to put on the best
cloth with the lilies on and had set the table
and was now having to unset it again.
Besides this, the tinned fowl had turned out
nearly all bones, so those ball things were being
added to make it look more.

" But I'm going to say " No fowl, thanks,"
said Ian, " and that will leave more. If
there's any over though I'm going to have
it to-morrow. I like that kind of fowl —
don't you ? "

" Very much," said Big John.

" Well, you needn't say you won't have
any," said Ian, " there's plenty for you and
Barbara. Of course Mother gets asked before

252 JOHN OF DAUNT.

you, doesn't she, but she's sure to say she'll
have a cutlet. I don't think the rule ought
to be asking ladies first when they're the
Mothers, do you ? They'd rather wait and
see how things are going."

" No doubt," said Big John inattentively,
" was that the bell, old man ? "

" No ; telephone," said Ian. " We usen't
to be able to hear the bell up here before but
now we're on the automatic you can hear it
everywhere. I like the automatic, Uncle
John ; you don't always want Daisy and
Gertrud knowing who you're ringing up, do
you ? "

" No doubt," said Big John. He was
standing on the balcony now, his hands in
his pockets gazing straight ahead.

He looked more sick than ever.

Three times he failed entirely to answer
his nephew's remarks.

Then he found that nephew at his elbow,
looking up at him with eyes that had no imp
in them at all.

" Uncle John," said the little fellow in a
whisper.

HOW SHORT ALL A DAY IS. 253

" That's me, old man."

' You can have this, Uncle John, to keep."

Big John found something rather sticky
was being pushed into his hand. He looked
at it and found that it was about half a
chocolate, wrapped in silver paper, and
flattened as if by being sat upon.

" She gave it to me, Uncle John," said
Littlejohn in a whisper. " You can take it
back with you to the war." The big hand
and the little one gripped hard.

Dinner passed in all its four courses. The
savouries were excellent. The mock turtle
soup deserved, and had indeed won, it said
so on the tin — a medal for pre-eminence.
The seven cutlets, the tinned fowl — and the
rice — stood up nobly against all attacks,
lan's heart swelled with the warmth of
hospitality as all the puddings were carried
in : he looked from the pineapple fritters,
to Barbara, from the nudeln and cherries to
Big John, from the apple charlotte and the
devilled almonds to his parents and felt bathed
in the pleasant vapour that exhales from
great hosts.

254 JOHN OF DAUNT.

Dinner in all its four courses passed.

Even when there are two young hearts all
a-quiver with the keenest, the finest, ah, the
purest emotion that life holds, if there are
four courses to dinner, such are the rigid
rules of etiquette, they must first be all par-
taken of before the hearts can be listened to.

There was the coffee, too. The very best
of coffee — Gertrud had been quite faithful.

This, of course, was carried up to the
drawing-room and the Doctor, of course, had
to bring out cigars — more delay.

Dinky, pitying Barbara's pink cheeks and
her nervous attempts to converse with her
host, the Doctor, carried her off while the
cigars were being discussed, to look at the
latest pattern in collars that Diana had
brought from Paris. Ian followed them
hurriedly ; he was not interested in the
latest collar from Paris but he was keenly
interested in Uncle John.

" I say, Mother," he said in a loud reproach-
ful whisper at the door, " don't go and take
her away from Uncle John. He wants her
like anything."

HOW SHORT ALL A DAY IS. 255

The cigars were smoked, smoked to their
last ash.

Hardly a word was spoken between the two
men, but no understanding could have been
deeper. Dee, chose to go from her Father's
knee to her Uncle's ; gradually she ceased
to fidget, her little hand closed fast round
one of his big fingers ; she leaned her head
against his khaki coat and fell to sleep there.

Big John looked down at her with brooding
wistful eyes.

" Doc," he said in a low voice, a very low
voice, " A man would like to be a father
before he dies."

And then the others came back. Indeed,
Ian had simply forced them back.

"Ah, well," said the Doctor, stretching
himself after his loved hour of leisure, " I
rather guess there are some patients down
below thirsting for my blood." His foot-
steps died away down the staircase.

" And I must see the children to bed," said
Dinky, " give me Dee, Jack, — I can undress
her without waking her up. Come, Ian."

Ian followed her instantly. But on the

256 JOHN OF DAUNT.

threshold he paused one dramatic moment,
smiled tenderly at Barbara, looked at Big
John with deep significance and — closed the
door.

When he was in his bunk the sight of his
pink pyjamas seemed to recall to him the
only crime he had on his conscience, and he
decided to clear it away.

" Mother," he said, " I slided down all the
banisters this morning but the rugs were
there and I didn't get killed."

He submitted cheerfully to the maternal
warnings and cheerfully undertook not to do
so again.

His mother kissed him, put out the light,
kissed him again;

" It's the funniest thing," he murmured.

" What is ? " said Dinky.

" How short all a day is. It only seems
half a jiffey since it was morning and I was
sliding down. And now it's night. Isn't it
funny ? "

"Very funny," said Dinky.

THE END;

LONDON : WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED.

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Empire as those of the Royal Navy itself.

Book of Railways

is a great favourite with all boys and girls who are "keen" on
railways, and even the more elderly " season " holder will find in it
much that will amuse and interest. In addition to over 300 illustra-
tions, there are TWELVE COLOURED PLATES, representing some ol
the most famous of the world's trains. The interest is not confined
to Great Britain, for there are also pictures and articles concerning
railways in Australia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

The Wonder Books

(continued)

The
Wonder

Book of Empire

RECENT events and pending developments alike render it of the
utmost importance that we should know more of the lands under the
Union Jack, of their peoples and resources, their wonders and attrac-
tions. Especially it is important that the children of all parts of the
Empire should realise how glorious is their heritage.

Wonder Book of

THE War has taught us all the importance of knowing more of the
ways of life and modes of thought of other peoples, especially of those
gallant Allies who have stood by us in the fight for freedom. The
articles, though brimful of information, are brightly written and as
thrilling as any story, while the Illustrations are absolutely unique
in their variety and interest, having been garnered from every
quarter of the globe.

wonder Book of Animals

ALL children who love animals — are there any who do not ? — hail
. this handsome volume with delight. Amusement and instruction are
so interwoven that, while it can be truthfully said there is not a dull
page in the book, it is equally true that there is not a useless one.
The BOOK OF ANIMALS is suited to children of all agee.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C

4

CHARMING
STORIES BY

Isabel M. Peacocke

Fully Illustrated. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net.

MY FRIEND PHIL

With Six Illustrations in Colour by MARGARET W. TARRANT.

"QUEENSLAND TIMES."— "A really delicious book . . . Phil
is an eternal questioner, quizzer and actor. He is no white-haired
Willie, but a natural, frank, unconventional young imp, who carries
a golden heart and withal is a perfect gentleman. There is no laying
down this book when opened until the end is reached, be the reader
young or old."

DICKY, KNIGHT-ERRANT

\Vith Six Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING.

"Miss ISABEL MATUE IEACOCKE is heartMy to be congratulated
on the tone and ability of her new book. She must take her place
among that small group of talented Australasian women who have
already done so much to create a children's literature for the land
where manly boys are the fit heirs of sturdy pioneers." — The
Age, Melbourne.

PATRICIA PAT

With Six Illustrations by HAROLD COPPING.

THIS story is far and away the best Look since Ethel Turner took the
reading world by storm with " Seven Little Australians." The tale is
droll, sympathetic, bright and full of literary charm. All the author's
fine qualities are reproduced in this story of a delightful child, who
flits through a love, romance in a manner that will cheer the hearts of
young and old alike. The story is brimful of excitement and jollity,
and is altogether sweet.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

5

Charming Colour Books for
Children

Large Crown 8vo. Cloth Gilt. Handsome Binding Design
with Pictorial Wrapper and Endpapers. 3s. 6d. net

Each with 48 COLOURED PLATES

By MARGARET W. TARRANT

NURSERY RHYMES

NOT since the days of Kate Greenaway have the old nursery
favourites been so daintily presented. Little Jack Horner,
Jack Sprat, Tom Tucker, Old King Cole and their illustrious
company are all here. The type is large and well-arranged,
and by means of the full Index of First Lines any rhyme can
be found in a moment.

FAIRY TALES

HERE again are all the immortals — old and yet ever new —
Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Puss-in- Boots, the redoubtable
Bluebeard and a host of others. The text has been carefully
edited in such a way that the youngest child can understand
and enjoy the stories.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

6

Charming Colour Books for
Children

Large Crown 8co. Cloth Gilt. Handsome Binding Design
with Pictorial Wrapper and Endpapers. 3s. 6d. net.

Each with 48 COLOURED PLATES

By MARGARET W. TARRANT

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN
WONDERLAND

THE edition of Lewis Carroll's immortal masterpiece. Never
has an artist so successfully conceived the characters from a
child's point of view, or given more happy expression to the sly
humour and mock seriousness of the story. This dainty volume,
with its wealth of coloured plates, is easily superior to editions
published at three and four times the price.

HANS ANDERSEN'S
FAIRY STORIES

A SELECTION of the stories which most appeal to younger
children, including such favourites as " The Ugly Duckling,"
"The Little Mermaid," "The Tinder Box," "The Emperor's
New Clothes," "The Snow Queen," and others. The great
Danish story-teller has a wondeiful hold on the affections of
young people, and this book is sure to please.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

7

Stories by

ETHEL TURNER

Large Crown 8ro. Fully Illustrated. Cloth Gilt. 3s. net

SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS

THE FAMILY AT MISRULE

THE LITTLE LARRIKIN

MISS BOBBIE

THE CAMP AT WANDINONG

THREE LITTLE MAIDS

STORY OF A BABY

LITTLE MOTHER MEG

BETTY AND CO.

MOTHER'S LITTLE GIRL

THE WHITE ROOF-TREE

IN THE MIST OF THE MOUNTAINS

THE STOLEN VOYAGE

FUGITIVES FROM FORTUNE

THE RAFT IN THE BUSH

AN OGRE UP-TO-DATE

THAT GIRL

THE SECRET OF THE SEA

THE APPLE OF HAPPINESS

FAIR INES

THE FLOWER O' THE PINE

THE CUB

JOHN OF DAUNT

CAPTAIN CUB

PORTS AND HAPPY HAVENS

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

8

Stories by

MARY GRANT BRUCE

Large Crown 8vo. Fully Illustrated. Cloth Gilt. 3s. net.

POSSUM

MRS. BRUCE writes with a freedom and grace which must win hosts
of readers, and there is a lovableness about her Australian youths and
maidens which makes one never tired of their healthy and sociable
views of life.

JIM AND WALLY

" There can be no doubt about the success of Miss Bruce . . .
real pathos which gets hold of the reader, and her effects are obtained
in a real natural way that makes them all the more telling. She
evidently knows the up-country life . . . she grips the attention
from start to finish." — Melbourne Argus.

A LITTLE BUSH MAID

"It is a real pleasure to recommend this story to Australian
readers." — Perth Western Mail,

MATES AT BILLABONG

" The incidents of station life, its humours, festivities, and mis-
haps, are admirably sketched in this vivid narrative." — Adelaide
Register.

TIMOTHY IN BUSHLAND

" The writer understands all about the wonders of the Australian
bush, its wild horses, kangaroos, wombats, and infinitely various
natural life." — Daily Telegraph.

GLEN EYRE

" An admirable story, exquisitely told, full of gentle pathos, and
ringing true all through." — The Sportsman.

NORAH OF BILLABONG

".The story is written in a refreshing and lovable manner, which
makes instant appeal." — Manchester Courier.

GRAYS HOLLOW

"A story always healthy and enjoyable in its sympathetic
delineation of unsophisticated nature." — The Scotsman.

FROM BILLABONG TO LONDON

" The story has many more incidents than Mrs. Bruce's earlier
books, and though her style is quiet and matter-of-fact, she does
succeed in infusing reality into her exciting episodes." — The Melbourne
Argus.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.

C. G. D. Roberts'

NATURE BOOKS

Large Crown Svo. Cloth Gilt. Fully Illustrated.
Pictorial Endpapers. 3s. 6d. net.

A BEAUTIFULLY produced series of Animal Stories by a writer
who has succeeded in depicting the many thrilling incidents
connected with Animal Life with a reality unapproached by
any other living Author.

HOOF AND CLAW
THE HOUSE IN THE WATER
THE BACKWOODSMEN
KINGS IN EXILE
NEIGHBOURS UNKNOWN
MORE KINDRED OF THE WILD
THE FEET OF THE FURTIVE

" Under the guidance of Mr. Roberts we have often
adventured among the wild beasts of the land and sea, and we
hope to do so many times in the future. It is an education
not to be missed by those who have the chance, and the
chance is everyone's. Mr. Roberts loves his wild nature,
and his readers, both old and young, should love it with
him." — Athenceum.

NEW VOLUME
With 16 Plates by PAUL BRANSOM

THE SECRET TRAILS

Price 5s. net
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON E.G.

10

Beautiful Gift Book

BIBLE STEPS FOR
CHILDREN

Large Crown Svo.

Stories from the Old and New Testaments
simply re-told by H. G. EMERSON

With Introduction by The Rev. Edward Shillito, M.A.
NET 2/6 NET

The sacred stories are here re-told in simple and
reverent language easily intelligible to young people,
Sunday School teachers and others will find this a most
useful Gift Book. With

8 COLOURED PLATES

and many reproductions of the greatest pictures in
Sacred Art.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

11

WARD, LOCK & CO.'S

Favourite Gift Books

OF AUSTRALIAN CHILD LIFE
Crown 8vo. Cloth. 3s. net. Fully Illustrated.

By LILIAN TURNER

"We are glad to have a simple, wholesome, restful writer like
Lilian Turner upon whom to fall back for stories for our growing
girls to read . . . she helps to keep our young people's tastes
pure and simple." — Melbourne Argus.

AN AUSTRALIAN LASSIE
BETTY. THE SCRIBE

PARADISE AND THE

PERRYS

THE PERRY GIRLS
THREE NEW CHUM GIRLS

APRIL GIRLS

STAIRWAYS TO THE STARS

A GIRL FROM THE BACK
BLOCKS

WAR'S HEART THROBS
NOUGHTS AND CROSSES

By VERA G. DWYER

" Miss Vera G. Dwyer is a clever story writer, who has the art
of exciting great interest in her characters." — Dundee Courier.

WITH BEATING WINGS
A WAR OF GIRLS

MONA'S MYSTERY MAN
CONQUERING HAL

By OTHER AUTHORS

MAORILAND FAIRY TALES
EDITH HOWES

MAX THE SPORT

LILIAN M. PYKE

DAYS THAT SPEAK

EVELYN GOODE

THE CHILDHOOD OF
HELEN. EVELYN GOODE

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

12

GIFT BOOKS FOR BOYS

Large Crown 8vo. Fully Illustrated. 3s. 6d. net.

Lord Roberts, K.G., v.c.

By CAPTAIN OWEN WHEELER

As a gift book for boys of all ages this story of a dauntless hero
could scarcely be surpassed, for long after his deeds as a
soldier have lost all but historical significance his character will
remain as an example to the manhood of Great Britain and the
Empire, and indeed of all English-speaking races.

The book is lavishly illustrated with portraits and drawings
which practically depict the battle-history of the British Empire
during a period of sixty years.

Dreadnoughts of the Dogger

By ROBERT LEIGHTON

With Eight full-page Illustrations in tints.

" This is an adventure book of a kind to which the boy whose
instinct is for the Navy will turn with rejoicing, as it tells a tale
of modern naval fighting in the North Sea." — Bristol Times
and Mirror.

" Every adventurous lad should read this tale, for from it he
will learn something of a stern discipline and at the same time
make the acquaintance of a really able piece of literary crafts-
manship."— Reading Standard.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

13

The Little Wonder
Books

A Dainty New Series of Humorous Stories

for the Little Ones by HARRY GOLDING

(Edile of the WONDER BOOKS)

Medium 16mo. Picture Boards. Is. net.

THE many children in all parts of the world who have grown
accustomed year by year to look for THE WONDER BOOK as the
most welcome feature of Christmas or the birthday will learn with
interest that the big WONDER BOOK has now a number of little
brothers and sisters. The LITTLE WONDER BOOKS are not for big
boys and girls at all ; they are the little ones' very own. Each
booklet contains about THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR, printed
on the very best art paper, and the type is so large and clear that it
will not baffle even the tiniest toddler. Best of all, the stories are
real stories, such as little people love and learn by heart almost
without knowing they do so.

1. BOBBY BUN AND

BUNTY

2. THE BROWNIES'

BIRTHDAY

3. APPLE TREE VILLA

4. TIM TUBBY TOES

5. MOTHER GOOSE:

Nursery Rhymes

6. TICK, TACK AND TOCK

7. BULLY BOY

8. ROBBIE AND DOBBIE

9. THE ANIMAL A.B.C.

10. BEN BO'SUN

11. THE TOY SOLDIERS

12. BUBBLE AND SQUEAK

13. OLD NOT-TOO-BRIGHT

AND LILYWHITE

14. THE GOBLIN SCOUTS

15. WILLIE WINKIE

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

14

THE BOOK FOR THE HANDY MAN

AN ENTIRELY NEW (RETI*E» AN» RI-WRITTEN)

E»1TI«N *F

Every Man His
Own Mechanic

Nearly 400 Illustrations. Over 500 Pages. Large Crown 8vo.
NET 3,6 NET

The most complete and comprehensive guide ever published

FOR AMATEURS IN

CARPENTRY FRETWORK

JOINERY VENEERING

BUILDING PLUMBING

TURNING CARVING

PAINTING MASONRY

GLAZING PAPERHANGING

SMITHING PLASTERING

METAL WORKING GRAINING

UPHOLSTERING STENCILLING

FRENCH POLISHING STAINING

PICTURE FRAME BELL HANGING,
MAKING &c. &c.

" There is a fund of solid information of every kind in this work
which entitles it to the proud distinction of being a complete vadt
mecum of the subjects upon which it treats." — The Daily Telegraph.

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.G.

I*

The New Stories by the Great Novelists, long and short alike,
appear regularly in THE

WINDSOR

MAGAZINE
THE IDEAL ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY

which has achieved the Most Brilliant Success of the day. The list

of Contributors to THE WINDSOR is unrivalled, for it includes all

the most popular Novelist Writers and Artists. Here are the na.mes

of a few of them : —

RUDYARD KIPi.ING
SIR H. HIDER HAGGARD
ANTHONY HOPE
MAURICE HEWLETT
SIR GILBERT PARKER
W. J. LOCKE
H. G. WELLS
HALL CAINE
I. ZANGWILL
MAARTEN MAARTENS
H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON
H A. VACHELL
W. W. JACOBS
BARRY PAIN
BEATRICE HARRADEN
ARNOLD BENNETT

CUTCLIFFE HYNE
HAROLD EINDLOSS
A. E. W. MASON
SIR A. CONAN DOYLE
JEROME K. JEROME
MARY CHOLMONDELEY
JUSTUS MILES FORMAN
E. F. BENSON
MRS. F. A. STEEL
GERTRUDE PAGE
EDEN PHILLPOTTS
BARONESS ORCZY
H \LLIWELL SUTCLIFFE
KEBLE HOWARD
CHARLES G D. ROBERTS

Every Number of THE WINDSOR contains several splendid
Complete Stories by Famous Novelists, Important Articles by
Authoritative Specialists and Beautiful Pictures by distinguished
Artists.

THE WINDSOR'S Illustrations represent the high-water mark
of current black-and-white art. In a word

The WINDSOR holds the Record

For the BEST FICTION, ARTICLES and PICTURES

Sevenpence Monthly
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED, LONDON, E.C.

16

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